Red Riding Hood

I recently bought a scholastic VCD featuring three well-loved stories of Red Riding Hood, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs. Since Ying Ying seemed quite bored yesterday, I decided to watch together with her as I nursed the little one.

It proved to be a worthy buy - the narrators are native speakers with good pronunciation. They also paced their reading just nice for the little ones to follow. The cartoon characters were very cute in a traditional way and I was quite tickled by the kind of language and vocabulary used in the telling of the stories like "he could scarcely believe his eyes" (to describe the baby bear when he caught sight of goldilocks in his bed) and "charming" to describe the sly wolf and "Mind your own business, thank you!" (the first pig's reply to the man who commented his idea of using straw to build a house wasn't a good idea) All very amusing! Guess it would be funnier if you were to watch it yourself.

But I was a bit hesitant when it came to the part where the big bad wolf gobbled down red riding hood and her granny. Not to mention the scene where the hunter came by and shot the wolf dead with his rifle, cut him open and thereby saved red riding hood and her granny.

Then we have the big bad wolf as a villian again in the story of the three little pigs where he gobbled up the first and the second piggies. The story ended with the wolf trying to climb down the chimney to get the third pig but the latter outwitted him by quickly putting a huge pot of boiling soup below. So the wolf ended up being cooked and eaten.

My goodness!!! What violence!!! Husband who caught the last part of the three little pigs, said so too. And while watching, I was thinking to myself - to show or not to show. Well, I guess it wasn't too bad cos the gobbling up / shooting / cutting up / boiling alive scenes were not very 'obvious' so as to speak (i.e. no blood or body parts were involved) but still... and Ying Ying is only 2.5 years old! I doubt she understood the meaning of being dead...

Haiz! I wonder if I over-reacting here?