Ohio State University’s Michelle Ann Abate has come out with a new book in which she reports that classic children stories have always been filled with violence.

"We tend to have a selective memory that forgets the detailed and sometimes graphic violence found in some classic books for children," she said.
Abate said she was inspired to write Bloody Murder when she was doing research for an introductory literature class she was hoping to teach at Hollins University in Roanoke, Va.
She wanted to talk about instances of murder in children's literature, which she first assumed would be relatively limited.
But Abate said she was surprised at how long her list grew as she thought about it.
In fact, she soon learned that homicide is so pervasive in children's books that "Murder - Juvenile Fiction" is its own classification category in one major library database.
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One need to look no further than the quintessential children's stories, fairy tales, to find violence and murder, Abate said. In the Grimm Brothers' version of Snow White, the title character is murdered not once, but multiple times.
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