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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 colors and educational intent. Over half the books she owned seemed obsessed with practicing counting to ten. Okay, counting is a good thing but it isn't everything. What about emotional intelligence, adverse credit remortgage 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. Firstly, modernity: Fairytales are, basically, fantasy - a genre which a lot of people look down their noses at, which is perhaps why there has been a growing trend for representational stories - 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 exorcism 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, or worse, starting out with a broadly realistic setting and then introducing magic or incredible behavour! 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 car insurance comparisons 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 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 Lamotrigine 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. Some numbers, shapes and colours primers amongst the stories, rhymes and songs a child needs are super and 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 learning some images and ideas you can use to start developing self-control (Hansel and Grethel), coping with being the smallest and least respected in the house (Cinderella), sibling rivalry (Three Little Pigs), family roles (The Three Bears) being wary of predatory strangers (Little Red Riding Hood) or going out to look for the things you need to live your life (Jack and the Beanstalk)?

And finally, 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.

Which leads me to my call to action. Fairytales are still alive. Just! And I write this now in the hope that it will nudge a few more people to check their memories and polish the stories in their heads because I believe the present generation of parents know far less of the old stories than their parents and grandparents knew - let us slap a conservation order on the stories in our heads. They may be grim in places but if we let them slip away, all we will have left to offer our children is the 'educational' (100 ways to count to ten) and the gruesome.

Writer, editor and English teacher, Kay Green is a lifelong lover of story in all its forms. Her collection 'Jung's People' was first published by Elastic Press and is now available through her own small press, which is also a club for the promotion of independent writers and illustrators. The club has an online forum for developing stories and poetry and 'enclaves' around the UK where like-minded writers get together for workshopping and discussion, and to organise book fairs and other activities.

Read more about fairytale and fantasy on TARGET="_BLANK" http://kaygreen.co.ukKay Green's Blog

Try out 'The Froggicorn' or 'A Tale of Seven Brothers' at TARGET="_BLANK" http://earlyworkspress.co.uk/story_pages.htmEarlyworks Press

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