What is the moral of Snow White?

What that actually means

The Queen has a mirror that tells the truth and she asks it the same question every single morning. That is the actual illness in this story, and it has nothing to do with Snow White. She was already the fairest for years and it never once made her happy, because the point was never the answer, it was the asking. Snow White, meanwhile, is not clever and does not become clever. She opens the door three times. What she has instead is that people like her enough to keep coming back for her, which the Queen, with all her power, cannot manage even once.

What happens in the story

A queen owns a mirror that cannot lie, and one morning it gives her an answer she does not want. Her stepdaughter is sent into the forest to be got rid of, finds a cottage belonging to seven miners, and is warned three times not to open the door. She opens it three times.

Questions to ask afterwards

The lesson lands better when a child works it out themselves.

1. Snow White is warned three times and opens the door three times. Is she foolish, or is something else going on?
2. The Queen has everything she wants. Why do you think she keeps asking the mirror?
3. The huntsman lets Snow White go and lies to the Queen about it. Was he right to lie?
4. The dwarfs go to work every day and come home to check on her. What does that tell you about them?
5. At the end the Queen is sent away rather than punished. Do you think that is fair?