When I was younger, I received a book of fairy tales. Think Brothers Grimm. I don’t remember that the stories were particularly horrifying; on the contrary, they were probably dulled at the edges like most Grimm books for children are. But the book did eat at my psyche for a very specific reason.
Somewhere near the back of the book was the story of Pandora and her box of evils. I recall being a fan of Greek myth in my youth, and I don’t really thing that the story itself had anything to do with the misgivings I had for the book, but you never know.
No, what had me truly spooked was the woodcarving image that was printed on the page near the pandora story. It depicted a little girl opening a box, from which many dark evils fled.
I could take the story just fine, but the picture, for whatever reason, I could not. The book remained shelved for the longest time, and these days, when I read fairy tales to Abby, I make sure that her Treasury of Children’s Fairy Tales does not contain any frightening woodcuts of little girls releasing plagues on humanity.
