Her constant orders for beheading are shocking to those modern critics of children's literature who feel that juvenile fiction should be free of all violence and especially violence with Freudian undertones. Even the Oz books of L. Frank Baum, so singularly free of the horrors to be found in Grimm and Andersen, contain many scenes of decapitation. As far as I know, there have been no empirical studies of how children react to such scenes and what harm if any is done to their psyche. My guess is that the normal child finds it all very amusing and is not damaged in the least, but that books like Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz should not be allowed to circulate indiscriminately among adults who are undergoing analysis.

Biography


Youth and education
Gardner son of a petroleum geologist grew up in and around Tulsa Oklahoma. Other authors began to share the column and the May 1986 issue saw the final installment under that title. In 1976 Gardner was a founding member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and he wrote a column called "Notes of a Fringe Watcher" (originally "Notes of a Psi-Watcher") from 1983 to 2002 for that organization's periodical Skeptical Inquirer.

He wrote the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American from 1956 to 1981 and the Notes of a Fringe-Watcher column in Skeptical Inquirer from 1983 to 2002 and publiMartin Gardnerd more than 100 books. Martin Gardner (October 21 1914 – May 22 2010) was an American popular mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics but with interests encompassing micromagic stage magic literature (especially the writings of Lewis Carroll and G.