Fakelore: children's books, mass-produced aboriginal art, that "improves" a traditional theme but takes it out of its original context. At its worst, fakelore can replace folklore.
From "Fakelore, Multiculturalism, and the Ethics of Children's Literature"
Certainly, traditional narrators synthesize the different versions they have heard. Certainly, each traditional storyteller is an artist who adds his or her own flair and interpretation to the tales he or she tells. However, such artistry and synthesis takes place within a culture that sets parameters for and limits to what peculiarities and deviations from previous tellings will be accepted, that frames the content and style of narrative, so even texts learned from other cultures become assimilated into the narrator's own. For children's book authors, the culture for which they write is a safe, homogenized vision for unity and caring in difference, perhaps best exemplified by Reading Rainbow. Ultimately, their "weaving" is an assimilation of all the cultural difference in their sources and supposed sources into their own mono-culture.
Admittedly, real folk narrative can be difficult to follow, mostly because the subtleties of reference in native languages are usually lost in translation, and I have sympathy for those who feel they must provide clarifications for the reader. Children's book authors, however, go far beyond facilitating reading. Many of them start with tales that were never really part of any folk tradition, and virtually all insist on "improving" style, character, plot, and theme, to please themselves and their readers, with little regard to the integrity and meaning of their sources. Rewriting is simply what children's book authors do, and no one seems to care whether or not that is ethical.
Copyright 1999-2011 Mark Wahl. All rights reserved.