Selections from an Interview on Modernising Children's Books for ABC Radio Melbourne

Talking Princess Culture on Life Matters, Radio National

To coincide with the release of Disney's new Cinderella film, I was a guest on Radio National's 'Life Matters' last Friday. I joined host Natasha Mitchell in a talkback session on the subject of girls and princess culture, along with Samantha Turnbull, author of the Anti-Princess Club series of books and children's author and school principal John Marsden.

Listen in to the podcast for a variety of perspectives on what wanting to be a princess means, not only for girls, but for boys too.

Scary Fairy Stories: The Gruesome History of Fairy Tales

Walter Crane, Beauty and the Beast (1874)

A few months ago, I was invited by ABC Melbourne's Libbi Gorr to record five short segments on fairy tales. The aim was to talk about how earlier versions of the tales, prior to their revision for children in the nineteenth century, had more salacious and gruesome origins than most people know about from their own childhood reading.

I gathered together some of the most fascinating and unusual elements of some of the most popular tales as they have been told and recorded across time and place. The five "Scary Fairy Stories" that I discussed were Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Cinderella.