No More Baddies? The New Trend in Children’s Stories

Gone are the big bad wolves

Once upon a time, in a cozy little cottage, lived a mischievous little kid named Timmy. Timmy had a habit that drove his dear old Granny nuts — he couldn’t resist sucking his thumb.

Every day, Timmy’s Granny would warn him, “Timmy, beware! If you keep sucking that thumb, the Great Long Scissors will come snipping and you’ll have no thumbs left to suck!”

Timmy didn’t listen. He went to suck his thumb even harder. Naughty boy!

One day, while Granny was busy knitting, Timmy went to his favorite corner and popped his thumb right into his mouth. But just then, came a pair of enormous scissors through the window clacking in the air!

Timmy’s eyes widened with fear as the Great Long Scissors snapped his thumb completely! Poor Timmy howled in pain, and from that day on, he never dared to suck his other thumb again, no matter how tempting it seemed.

Timmy learned that sometimes, it’s better to take the advice than to face the harsh consequences of not listening to his elders.

Believe it or not, this grotesque story was told to little kids in Germany in the 19th century. Neighbors would call child services if they heard you telling this story to your child today. Well, at the time you’d be called out for not telling it!

The story, called “Little Suck-a-Thumb”, was part of a broader body of literature written by Heinrich Hoffmann back in 1845 to have German parents tell it to their kids to scare them into behaving.

But since then things have changed for the little ones. Nowadays we’re going into the opposite extreme…children’s literature is getting rid of villains.

The change in villain depiction

Childhood is often tied to the idea of innocence. We shelter kids from anything remotely scary or sad. But historically, baddies were always there in fairy tales (like Great Long Scissors!), guiding kids through a world of ogres and monsters.

But today the need for villains seems to be losing its edge.

Several studies show that antagonists have been vanishing from children’s pages. In a study compiling 150 awarded or recommended stories between 1977 and 1990, only a third of the analyzed works featured antagonists. And the same happened with stories between 2003 and 2013 in a follow-up study by the same author.

Moreover, a study focused on children’s literature in Catalan between 2002 and 2006 showed that there was a significant decrease in foreign characters depicted as antagonists or villains contributing to a decrease in the traditional portrayal of antagonists in children’s literature.

Today antagonists don’t come only as your classic big bad wolves anymore. Villains come in all shapes and sizes now, from humorous parodies to realistic historical figures.

We find a similar trend in the illustrations of children’s books. In a recent study, researchers analyzed 100 awarded stories between the years 2000 and 2019 and found that only 25% of them have an antagonist.

Are we sugar-coating reality?

What kind of world do we want our kids to grow up in?

Do we want to portray a world where everything is happy and sunshine or one where they learn to courageously face adversity? Kids might need a bit of darkness to navigate their fears and complexities, otherwise they’ll be overwhelmed when these parts of life appear in their journey. And they will come, for sure.

It seems the kids are not the ones afraid of the big bad wolf. It’s us adults, scared that we won’t be able to guide them through the woods.