Just last night, I started reading The Arabian Nights to the kids at bedtime; my wife bought it to inoculate them in advance of seeing Disney's Aladdin someday.
Which, anyway, is kind of blowing my mind right now, because some anonymous commenter somewhere a couple of years ago argues that it's set in the future, specifically, "a post-apocalyptic world" at least 8,000 years from now, "where only Arab culture and some Greek survived," and where "amazing technological marvels left behind by the previous civilization, like sentient flying carpets or genetically engineered parrots which comprehend human speech instead of just mimic it are taken for granted by the locals or considered 'magic'."
Which would be crazy enough, if six minutes later, some other anonymous sage hadn't revealed that "Disney Princesses are like the Eternal Champion, all the same person born in different times and places."
I mean, holy crap, it's like A.I., Twelve Monkeys, Kundun and that one ST:TNG episode, all in one! It also explains why the princesses never make eye contact with each other: that's the only way to keep the wormholes in the fabric of space-time from collapsing in on themselves and obliterating this entire instantiation of the multiverse! How could we all have been so blind??
UPDATE Though this future theory is entirely dependent on there being "no way for [the Genie] to know of the fashion trends which have happened" in the 10,000 years since he's been trapped in the lamp. So the whole thing falls apart if if he had like, Tumblr, or a subscription to Vogue or whatever.
Here's the thread from wherever [imgur.com, with a backup here]
All the same person, eh? I suppose that could explain why none of them look like they have noses, when looked at from straight on.
Which version of the Arabian Nights are you reading to the kids?
So I guess I should have read Hamlet to the kids before exposing them to the Lion King?
Or is it too confusing that in the Disney version only King Hamlet (Mufasa) and Claudius (Scar) die and Ophelia (Nala), Prince Hamlet (Simba), Gertrude (Sarabi), Laertes (I think Disney left him out) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern (Shenzi, Banzai and Ed) all live to see another day?
Oh, no Lion Polonius, either.
It's a new edition of The Arabian Nights by Wafa Tarnowska. So far it's pretty good, maybe a little older than the kids, but they can follow along fine.
It's part of our Disney Princess countermeasures; rather than fighting against the Disney versions of stories, we just try to make sure they're not the dominant version, but one of many.
That sounds a little bit compicated for younger kids but I guess It's Disney trying to apeal to a wider market.