What would childhood be without fairy tales? Stories about Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and the rest of Mother Goose’s gang are mainstays of childhood right before bedtime. But what messages do these stories give kids, especially girls?

Not a good one, according to Bruce Lansky, author of Girls to the Rescue, a collection of short stories that have essentially retold the tales of Mother Goose and Grimm in a 90s kind of way. He will be signing copies of his book at Big Table Books Friday at 7 p.m.

“It’s a book that makes you laugh and cry,” Lansky said. “I wanna entertain girls, inspire them and encourage them. The way for me to do that is present positive role models so they laugh, or cry, or cheer.”

Girls to the Rescue stemmed from a study Lansky did on nursery rhymes. He also penned The New Adventures of Mother Goose in 1993; the two books are intended to provide an alternative to the violence and sexism that saturates traditional tales.

“I struggled with Mother Goose,” he said. “All of the stuff in the early 1800s or late 1700s basically puts women in a mold: you have to be beautiful, and you have to be passive. How much more passive can you be besides being in a coma like Sleeping Beauty?”

Lansky strives to make an entirely new body of books and stories for young people, literature that puts power and strength into female hands.

“I’m trying to create a whole new literature for young girls. I have a new idea: a girl who is highly moral, honest, courageous, kind. A wonderful, wonderful girl. She sees a problem, and she solves it; she doesn’t do it by magic or because she’s beautiful.”

Lansky sees a lot of the negative messages stemming from two main places: the focus on only “beautiful” girls and violence. Like, what’s up with Hansel and Gretel throwing the witch in the oven? And how come Cinderella relies on her good looks to get by?

“My real problem with it is beauty,” Lansky explained. “[Girls to the Rescue] has no beauty, no magic, no violence. Why? Emphasis on beauty — that’s where anorexia and bulimia come from. And violence — kids sit in front of the TV and learn that you solve problems through fighting.

“[The stories are] really about what girls do to help their families: accomplishment, achievement, service,” he continued. “It’s about more noble things. It’s about empowering girls.”

Lansky explained that the stories might have served a purpose at one time (for example, “Little Red Riding Hood” sends little kids the message not to talk to strangers and not to stray from the path for their own personal safety).

But for as much good as some of the stories do, a lot of the other tales discuss topics that our present-day culture can definitely do without.

“Some of the stuff in Grimm is really sick,” Lansky said. “It displays and showcases a lot of values that we no longer need.”

Not that Lansky reserves all of his criticism for literature of yore. On the contrary, a lot of recent publications, like the Sweet Valley Highs and the Baby-Sitters Club series, are laden with negative images.

“I’m not just making a comment on the old days,” Lansky explained. “There are too few heroes for women today. Like the girls in the stories, I wanna make a difference.”

Big Table Books is located at 330 Main St. in downtown Ames. The signing is free and open to the public.

For more information, please call 232-8976.