So where have we got to with fairytales for little people? I grew up in an era that was all for innovation and modernity, with a strong feminist input, so the Brothers Grimm were pretty much off the menu.

I approached the bookshelf at my granddaughter’s house the other day, aiming to find a cozy storybook. Book after book emerged jangling with primary colours and educational intent. Over half the books she owned seemed obsessed with practising counting to ten. Okay, counting is a good thing but it isn’t everything. What about emotional intelligence, what about developing imagination?

“Let’s leave the books and just tell a story ourselves,” I suggested.

My granddaughter, who is two-and-a-half, didn’t grasp what I was trying to do at all. For her, story equals book and my refusal to pick up a book amounted to an annoying refusal to tell a story.

So, I’ve decided to go back and look again at our reasons for dumping traditional fairytales and traditional (that is, oral) storytelling. First, modernity. Fairytales are, basically, fantasy – a genre which a lot of people look down their noses at but there is a good reason for offering fantasy to under fives. Symbolic fantasy may look, to logically minded adults, like a sort of complicated picture-puzzle, designed to confuse, but for youngsters the situation is exactly the opposite. They have very little experience of the workings of the real world and a limited ability to cope with abstract concepts so dragons, monsters and fairies are far easier to identify with than those things they symbolise. Also, if you are going to write fiction, why confuse the little ones by making it look like reality? Isn’t it better to set your story in what is clearly and unmistakeably fantasy land, so the child knows where it is?

Secondly, the feminist and socialist issues: A lot of fairytales have been written off as being retrograde, unPC – all those little princesses in ball gowns marrying princes, the despotic kings in their castles, and heroes living happily ever after. Well, there was a time when I used to rant and rave about such things myself but I know fantasy better than that now. It is, essentially, dream-language and dream-language is slow to change – it doesn’t need to win an election and doesn’t care if kings are out of fashion. In fantasy land, to leave home and marry a prince at the end of your adventures is to stop being a parent-dependent kiddy and start living and working with your peer group. To become a king or queen is to be in charge of your own ‘kingdom’ – your life. Children can get the feel of these meanings at a far younger age than they can grasp abstract concepts like maturity, empowerment and autonomy so for heaven’s sake, let them have the symbols!

Thirdly, the likes of the Brothers Grimm were taken off many children’s shelves on the grounds that they were, well, grim. Chopping up wolves stomachs, eating – or attempting to eat – a murdered girl’s organs, dancing to your death in red hot shoes: At first glance, these do seem to be the stuff of nightmare and far too violent for little minds but to think this is to think like an adult. It’s deceptive for two reasons:

Children are violent: One of the main problems under fives have to solve is what to do with their own tempers and frustrations. Surely it is better to play ‘big bad wolf’ and think about issues of vengeance and attack in fantasy land than it is to sit all alone surrounded by sweetie pie counting books, thinking you’re the only person in the world who ever wanted to bite someone.

If you watch children at play, you will find it is the ones who have been offered a fantasy world who can solve conflicts with the least violence. If you don’t have a story to tell, a metaphor to use, then your only recourse when someone challenges you is to bite and kick.

Stories are not graphic. Do you allow your little ones to remain in the room when the news is on? When the boxing or the rugby is? Does your five-year-old get to see the same videos your eleven-year-old chooses to watch? If so, a vast amount of frightening violent imagery is being pushed into a very young head. Graphic, moving images are far more disturbing than ideas in spoken words. When you say, ‘Jack chopped the beanstalk down and the ogre fell to his death’ the child has a vague picture of a thump and a cloud of dust. When you say ‘Hansel and Grethel pushed the witch into her own oven and baked her’ the child thinks ‘jolly good for them, that’ll show her!’ There is no thought of screams, fried flesh and all the rest of it – unless those ideas have already been imprinted by videos. The child understands fantasy and is thinking symbolically.

Now, a word about ‘education’ – when I complained about all my granddaughter’s ‘educational’ books, that doesn’t mean I disapprove of them as such. It’s fine to have some numbers, shapes and colours primers amongst the stories, rhymes and songs a child needs. Modern, innovative publishers have produced a feast of books way beyond what I could have imagined in my own childhood. I don’t for one moment want to throw them away but I don’t think they are enough.

We are all very anxious about schooling in this country at the moment. We really can’t wait to get going on the pre-maths and pre-reading skills to give the poor kids a head start on the key stages treadmill but there is so much more to education than numeracy and literacy. What is most important to a four-year-old, to be able to count to ten, or to start exploring ideas about self-control (Hansel and Grethel), coping with being the smallest and least respected in the house (Cinderella), being wary of predatory strangers (Little Red Riding Hood), experimenting with different roles in the family (Goldilocks) or going out to look for the things you need to live your life (Jack and the Beanstalk)?

Now, let us consider three different formats. Video is too graphic. Books are better. The human voice best of all. Fairytales, unless we choose to neglect them to death, are in our heads. We don’t need a book in front of us to tell the story of Cinderella or The Three Little Pigs. We can just start talking, and improvise any details that escape us. That means the story can be told at the pace the child wishes, starting and stopping, adding detail or skating over bits, according to the child’s level of understanding and interest. It means the child can join in, adapt and question the story. It’s hard to imagine a more effective learning tool.

Which brings me on to the subject of the oral tradition. Modern publishers are constantly producing new and exciting childrens books. Great, the more the merrier - but the stories they produce haven’t been tried and tested. What makes traditional fairytales so amazing is that while generations of parents were telling and re-telling them, a vast, long-term editorial process was going on. The versions of the tales that reached us were polished beyond anything one writer could do in a lifetime.

And finally, my call to action. Let’s not halt this long evolution of stories. Fairytales are still alive, but at risk. I write this now hoping that it will nudge a few people to check their memories and re-tell the stories they have in their heads. Only by telling the stories you know well to the next generation can you keep the process going. I believe my generation know far less of the old stories than our grandparents did. Let us now slap a conservation order on the stories we still know. If you can’t remember any, take a look at a copy of Grimms Fairytales - I bet it’ll all come rushing back. They may be grim in places, but they have stood the test of time - they won’t harm your kids. If we let them slip away, all we’ll have to offer our kids will be Disney bowdlerisations, 100 ways of counting to 10, and the truly gruesome legacy of passive TV and video gazing.