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138-450: Carolivia Herron (born Carol Olivia Herron; July 22, 1947) is an American writer of children 's and adult literature, and a scholar of African-American Judaica . She was born to Oscar Smith Herron and Georgia Carol (Johnson) Herron, in Washington, D.C. Herron converted to Judaism in adulthood, and she has paternal-line Jewish descent from her grandmother via Jewish Geechees . She is

276-404: A Peter Rabbit doll, making Peter the first licensed character . Michael O. Tunnell and James S. Jacobs, professors of children's literature at Brigham Young University, write, "Potter was the first to use pictures as well as words to tell the story, incorporating coloured illustration with text, page for page." Rudyard Kipling published The Jungle Book in 1894. A major theme in the book

414-712: A courtesy book by the Dutch priest Erasmus . A Pretty and Splendid Maiden's Mirror , an adaptation of a German book for young women, became the first Swedish children's book upon its 1591 publication. Sweden published fables and a children's magazine by 1766. In Italy , Giovanni Francesco Straparola released The Facetious Nights of Straparola in the 1550s. Called the first European storybook to contain fairy-tales, it eventually had 75 separate stories and written for an adult audience. Giulio Cesare Croce also borrowed from some stories children enjoyed for his books. Russia 's earliest children's books, primers , appeared in

552-461: A Chinese Studio (published posthumously, 1766), which has been described by Yuken Fujita of Keio University as having "a reputation as the most outstanding short story collection." The fairy tale itself became popular among the précieuses of upper-class France (1690–1710), and among the tales told in that time were the ones of La Fontaine and the Contes of Charles Perrault (1697), who fixed

690-525: A Land Baby , by Rev. Charles Kingsley (1862), which became extremely popular and remains a classic of British children's literature. In 1883, Carlo Collodi wrote the first Italian fantasy novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio , which was translated many times. In that same year, Emilio Salgari , the man who would become "the adventure writer par excellence for the young in Italy" first published his legendary character Sandokan . In Britain, The Princess and

828-562: A brightly colored cover that appealed to children—something new in the publishing industry. Known as gift books, these early books became the precursors to the toy books popular in the nineteenth century. Newbery was also adept at marketing this new genre. According to the journal The Lion and the Unicorn , "Newbery's genius was in developing the fairly new product category, children's books, through his frequent advertisements... and his clever ploy of introducing additional titles and products into

966-492: A fixed form, and regardless of literary influence, the tellers constantly altered them for their own purposes. The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other collectors, both inspiring them to collect tales and leading them to similarly believe, in a spirit of romantic nationalism , that the fairy tales of a country were particularly representative of it, to the neglect of cross-cultural influence. Among those influenced were

1104-418: A folklore, Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index 300–749,—in a cataloguing system that made such a distinction—to gain a clear set of tales. His own analysis identified fairy tales by their plot elements, but that in itself has been criticized, as the analysis does not lend itself easily to tales that do not involve a quest , and furthermore, the same plot elements are found in non-fairy tale works. Were I asked, what

1242-592: A founding member of " Jews of African Descent". She has a BA in English from Eastern Baptist College in Pennsylvania (now Eastern University ). She earned an M.A. in English from Villanova University in 1973, and an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania . Herron spent a postdoctoral research year at Brandeis University investigating

1380-516: A genre, Robinsonade ), adventure stories written specifically for children began in the nineteenth century. Early examples from British authors include Frederick Marryat 's The Children of the New Forest (1847) and Harriet Martineau 's The Peasant and the Prince (1856). The Victorian era saw the development of the genre, with W. H. G. Kingston , R. M. Ballantyne and G. A. Henty specializing in

1518-467: A knowledge of the letters; be taught to read, without perceiving it to be anything but a sport, and play themselves into that which others are whipp'd for." He also suggested that picture books be created for children. In the nineteenth century, a few children's titles became famous as classroom reading texts. Among these were the fables of Aesop and Jean de la Fontaine and Charles Perraults's 1697 Tales of Mother Goose . The popularity of these texts led to

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1656-847: A literary variant of fairy tales such as Water and Salt and Cap O' Rushes . The tale itself resurfaced in Western literature in the 16th and 17th centuries, with The Facetious Nights of Straparola by Giovanni Francesco Straparola (Italy, 1550 and 1553), which contains many fairy tales in its inset tales, and the Neapolitan tales of Giambattista Basile (Naples, 1634–36), which are all fairy tales. Carlo Gozzi made use of many fairy tale motifs among his Commedia dell'Arte scenarios, including among them one based on The Love For Three Oranges (1761). Simultaneously, Pu Songling , in China, included many fairy tales in his collection, Strange Stories from

1794-427: A man-eating tiger with her own hand." In contemporary literature , many authors have used the form of fairy tales for various reasons, such as examining the human condition from the simple framework a fairytale provides. Some authors seek to recreate a sense of the fantastic in a contemporary discourse. Some writers use fairy tale forms for modern issues; this can include using the psychological dramas implicit in

1932-707: A mask on a human face, as in fables . In his essay " On Fairy-Stories ", J.   R.   R.   Tolkien agreed with the exclusion of "fairies" from the definition, defining fairy tales as stories about the adventures of men in Faërie , the land of fairies, fairytale princes and princesses, dwarves , elves, and not only other magical species but many other marvels. However, the same essay excludes tales that are often considered fairy tales, citing as an example The Monkey's Heart , which Andrew Lang included in The Lilac Fairy Book . Steven Swann Jones identified

2070-487: A monumental work called Le Cabinet des Fées , an enormous collection of stories from the 17th and 18th centuries. The first collectors to attempt to preserve not only the plot and characters of the tale, but also the style in which they were told, was the Brothers Grimm , collecting German fairy tales; ironically, this meant although their first edition (1812 & 1815) remains a treasure for folklorists, they rewrote

2208-489: A moral or religious message. Children's literature has been shaped by religious sources, like Puritan traditions, or by more philosophical and scientific standpoints with the influences of Charles Darwin and John Locke. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are known as the "Golden Age of Children's Literature" because many classic children's books were published then. There is no single or widely used definition of children's literature. It can be broadly defined as

2346-655: A movement concerned with reforming both education and literature for children. Its founder, Johann Bernhard Basedow , authored Elementarwerk as a popular textbook for children that included many illustrations by Daniel Chodowiecki . Another follower, Joachim Heinrich Campe , created an adaptation of Robinson Crusoe that went into over 100 printings. He became Germany's "outstanding and most modern" writer for children. According to Hans-Heino Ewers in The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature , "It can be argued that from this time,

2484-531: A new sophistication to the historical adventure novel. Philip Pullman in the Sally Lockhart novels and Julia Golding in the Cat Royal series have continued the tradition of the historical adventure. An important aspect of British children's literature has been comic books and magazines . Amongst the most popular and longest running comics have been The Beano and The Dandy , both first published in

2622-451: A picture book aimed at children in which a princess rescues a prince, Angela Carter 's The Bloody Chamber , which retells a number of fairy tales from a female point of view and Simon Hood's contemporary interpretation of various popular classics. There are also many contemporary erotic retellings of fairy tales, which explicitly draw upon the original spirit of the tales, and are specifically for adults. Modern retellings focus on exploring

2760-869: A separate category of literature especially in the Victorian era , with some works becoming internationally known, such as Lewis Carroll 's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass . Another classic of the period is Anna Sewell 's animal novel Black Beauty (1877). At the end of the Victorian era and leading into the Edwardian era, author and illustrator Beatrix Potter published The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 1902. Potter went on to produce 23 children's books and become very wealthy. A pioneer of character merchandising, in 1903 she patented

2898-523: A series of twelve books . The Golden Age of Children's Literature ended with World War I . The period before World War II was much slower in children's publishing. The main exceptions in England were the publications of Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne in 1926, the first Mary Poppins book by P. L. Travers in 1934, The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and the Arthurian The Sword in

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3036-558: A technique developed by evolutionary biologists to trace the relatedness of living and fossil species . Among the tales analysed were Jack and the Beanstalk , traced to the time of splitting of Eastern and Western Indo-European, over 5000 years ago. Both Beauty and the Beast and Rumpelstiltskin appear to have been created some 4000 years ago. The story of The Smith and the Devil ( Deal with

3174-426: A time ", this tells us that a fairy tale or a märchen was originally a little story from a long time ago when the world was still magic. (Indeed, one less regular German opening is "In the old times when wishing was still effective".) The French writers and adaptors of the conte de fées genre often included fairies in their stories; the genre name became "fairy tale" in English translation and "gradually eclipsed

3312-439: A version intended for children. The moralizing strain in the Victorian era altered the classical tales to teach lessons, as when George Cruikshank rewrote Cinderella in 1854 to contain temperance themes. His acquaintance Charles Dickens protested, "In an utilitarian age, of all other times, it is a matter of grave importance that fairy tales should be respected." Psychoanalysts such as Bruno Bettelheim , who regarded

3450-515: A wide range of topics including education, natural history, fantasy, mystery, and biblical narratives and is best remembered today for her Noddy , The Famous Five , The Secret Seven , and The Adventure Series . The first of these children's stories, Five on a Treasure Island , was published in 1942. In the 1950s, the book market in Europe began to recover from the effects of the two world wars. An informal literary discussion group associated with

3588-539: A world where all the fairy tales take place, and the characters are aware of their role in the story, such as in the film series Shrek . Other authors may have specific motives, such as multicultural or feminist reevaluations of predominantly Eurocentric masculine-dominated fairy tales, implying critique of older narratives. The figure of the damsel in distress has been particularly attacked by many feminist critics. Examples of narrative reversal rejecting this figure include The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch ,

3726-405: Is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine : that is a fairytale   ... of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful. As Stith Thompson points out, talking animals and the presence of magic seem to be more common to the fairy tale than fairies themselves. However, the mere presence of animals that talk does not make a tale a fairy tale, especially when the animal is clearly

3864-646: Is abandonment followed by fostering, as in the life of Mowgli , echoing Kipling's own childhood. In the latter years of the 19th century, precursors of the modern picture book were illustrated books of poems and short stories produced by English illustrators Randolph Caldecott , Walter Crane , and Kate Greenaway . These had a larger proportion of pictures to words than earlier books, and many of their pictures were in colour. Some British artists made their living illustrating novels and children's books, among them Arthur Rackham , Cicely Mary Barker , W. Heath Robinson , Henry J. Ford , John Leech , and George Cruikshank . In

4002-421: Is added and rules for processing are formed solely by one's sensory experiences. A corollary of this doctrine was that the mind of the child was born blank and that it was the duty of the parents to imbue the child with correct notions. Locke himself emphasized the importance of providing children with "easy pleasant books" to develop their minds rather than using force to compel them: "Children may be cozen'd into

4140-582: Is an adaptation of the myth of Blodeuwedd from the Mabinogion , set in modern Wales – it won Garner the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association , recognising the year's best children's book by a British author. Mary Norton wrote The Borrowers (1952), featuring tiny people who borrow from humans. Dodie Smith 's The Hundred and One Dalmatians was published in 1956. Philippa Pearce 's Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) has Tom opening

4278-467: Is an epic trilogy of fantasy novels consisting of Northern Lights (1995, published as The Golden Compass in North America), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The three novels have won a number of awards, most notably the 2001 Whitbread Book of

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4416-451: Is best known today. The Brothers Grimm titled their collection Children's and Household Tales and rewrote their tales after complaints that they were not suitable for children. In the modern era, fairy tales were altered so that they could be read to children. The Brothers Grimm concentrated mostly on sexual references; Rapunzel , in the first edition, revealed the prince's visits by asking why her clothing had grown tight, thus letting

4554-406: Is in its essence only one aspect of the collective unconscious as well as always representing also the whole collective unconscious. Other famous people commented on the importance of fairy tales, especially for children. For example, G. K. Chesterton argued that "Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child

4692-409: Is its own best explanation; that is, its meaning is contained in the totality of its motifs connected by the thread of the story. [...] Every fairy tale is a relatively closed system compounding one essential psychological meaning which is expressed in a series of symbolical pictures and events and is discoverable in these". "I have come to the conclusion that all fairy tales endeavour to describe one and

4830-608: Is that the fairy tale has ancient roots, older than the Arabian Nights collection of magical tales (compiled circa 1500 AD), such as Vikram and the Vampire , and Bel and the Dragon . Besides such collections and individual tales, in China Taoist philosophers such as Liezi and Zhuangzi recounted fairy tales in their philosophical works. In the broader definition of the genre,

4968-552: The Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge . Ruth Manning-Sanders 's first collection, A Book of Giants , retells a number of giant stories from around the world. Susan Cooper 's The Dark Is Rising is a five-volume fantasy saga set in England and Wales. Raymond Briggs ' children's picture book The Snowman (1978) has been adapted as an animation, shown every Christmas on British television. The Reverend. W. Awdry and son Christopher 's The Railway Series features Thomas

5106-465: The Bronze Age . Fairy tales, and works derived from fairy tales, are still written today. The Jatakas are probably the oldest collection of such tales in literature, and the greater part of the rest are demonstrably more than a thousand years old. It is certain that much (perhaps one-fifth) of the popular literature of modern Europe is derived from those portions of this large bulk which came west with

5244-555: The Crusades through the medium of Arabs and Jews. Folklorists have classified fairy tales in various ways. The Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index and the morphological analysis of Vladimir Propp are among the most notable. Other folklorists have interpreted the tales' significance, but no school has been definitively established for the meaning of the tales. Some folklorists prefer to use the German term Märchen or "wonder tale" to refer to

5382-463: The Renaissance , such as Giovanni Francesco Straparola and Giambattista Basile , and stabilized through the works of later collectors such as Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm . In this evolution, the name was coined when the précieuses took up writing literary stories; Madame d'Aulnoy invented the term Conte de fée , or fairy tale, in the late 17th century. Before the definition of

5520-1016: The Washington Performing Arts Society in 2009. Herron has taught literature at many institutions, including Harvard University , Mount Holyoke College , Brandeis University , California State University, Chico , William and Mary , and Marien N'Guabi University in Brazzaville , Republic of the Congo . In 2017 Herron joined the Classics Department at Howard University , and currently teaches undergraduate courses in Humanities (mostly epics) and Blacks in Antiquity. She also teaches children directly working directly in Grecian epics with her vast understanding of ancient Greece mythology. She also has

5658-409: The "purest and simplest expression of collective unconscious psychic processes" and "they represent the archetypes in their simplest, barest and most concise form" because they are less overlaid with conscious material than myths and legends. "In this pure form, the archetypal images afford us the best clues to the understanding of the processes going on in the collective psyche". "The fairy tale itself

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5796-446: The 1740s, a cluster of London publishers began to produce new books designed to instruct and delight young readers. Thomas Boreman was one. Another was Mary Cooper , whose two-volume Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744) is the first known nursery rhyme collection. But the most celebrated of these pioneers is John Newbery , whose first book for the entertainment of children was A Little Pretty Pocket-Book ." Widely considered

5934-470: The 17th century, a passion for the conversational parlour game based on the plots of old folk tales swept through the salons. Each salonnière was called upon to retell an old tale or rework an old theme, spinning clever new stories that not only showcased verbal agility and imagination but also slyly commented on the conditions of aristocratic life. Great emphasis was placed on a mode of delivery that seemed natural and spontaneous. The decorative language of

6072-655: The 1890s, some of the best known fairy tales from England were compiled in Joseph Jacobs ' English Fairy Tales , including Jack and the Beanstalk , Goldilocks and the Three Bears , The Three Little Pigs , Jack the Giant Killer and Tom Thumb . The Kailyard School of Scottish writers, notably J. M. Barrie , creator of Peter Pan (1904), presented an idealised version of society and brought fantasy and folklore back into fashion. In 1908, Kenneth Grahame wrote

6210-621: The 1930s he began publishing his Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the English Lake District and the Norfolk Broads . Many of them involve sailing; fishing and camping are other common subjects. Biggles was a popular series of adventure books for young boys, about James Bigglesworth, a fictional pilot and adventurer , by W. E. Johns . Between 1941 and 1961 there were 60 issues with stories about Biggles, and in

6348-457: The 1930s. British comics in the 20th century evolved from illustrated penny dreadfuls of the Victorian era (featuring Sweeney Todd , Dick Turpin and Varney the Vampire ). First published in the 1830s, according to The Guardian , penny dreadfuls were "Britain's first taste of mass-produced popular culture for the young." Robin Hood featured in a series of penny dreadfuls in 1838 which sparked

6486-478: The 1960s occasional contributors included the BBC astronomer Patrick Moore . Between 1940 and 1947, W. E. Johns contributed sixty stories featuring the female pilot Worrals . Evoking epic themes, Richard Adams 's 1972 survival and adventure novel Watership Down follows a small group of rabbits who escape the destruction of their warren and seek to establish a new home. Geoffrey Trease and Rosemary Sutcliff brought

6624-466: The 19th century: that the folk tradition preserved fairy tales in forms from pre-history except when "contaminated" by such literary forms, leading people to tell inauthentic tales. The rural, illiterate, and uneducated peasants, if suitably isolated, were the folk and would tell pure folk tales. Sometimes they regarded fairy tales as a form of fossil, the remnants of a once-perfect tale. However, further research has concluded that fairy tales never had

6762-625: The Devil ) appears to date from the Bronze Age , some 6000 years ago. Various other studies converge to suggest that some fairy tales, for example the swan maiden , could go back to the Upper Palaeolithic. Originally, adults were the audience of a fairy tale just as often as children. Literary fairy tales appeared in works intended for adults, but in the 19th and 20th centuries the fairy tale became associated with children's literature. The précieuses , including Madame d'Aulnoy , intended their works for adults, but regarded their source as

6900-586: The English faculty at the University of Oxford, were the "Inklings", with the major fantasy novelists C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as its main members. C. S. Lewis published the first installment of The Chronicles of Narnia series in 1950, while Tolkien is best known, in addition to The Hobbit , as the author of The Lord of the Rings (1954). Another writer of fantasy stories is Alan Garner author of Elidor (1965), and The Owl Service (1967). The latter

7038-510: The French literary society, who saw them as only fit for old people and children. In 1658, John Amos Comenius in Bohemia published the informative illustrated Orbis Pictus , for children under six learning to read. It is considered to be the first picture book produced specifically for children. The first Danish children's book was The Child's Mirror by Niels Bredal in 1568, an adaptation of

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7176-493: The Goblin and its sequel The Princess and Curdie , by George MacDonald , appeared in 1872 and 1883, and the adventure stories Treasure Island and Kidnapped , both by Robert Louis Stevenson , were extremely popular in the 1880s. Rudyard Kipling 's The Jungle Book was first published in 1894, and J. M. Barrie told the story of Peter Pan in the novel Peter and Wendy in 1911. Johanna Spyri 's two-part novel Heidi

7314-582: The Great wrote allegories for children, and during her reign, Nikolai Novikov started the first juvenile magazine in Russia. The modern children's book emerged in mid-18th-century England. A growing polite middle-class and the influence of Lockean theories of childhood innocence combined to create the beginnings of childhood as a concept. In an article for the British Library , professor MO Grenby writes, "in

7452-663: The Grimm brothers also contributed to children's literature through their academic pursuits. As professors, they had a scholarly interest in the stories, striving to preserve them and their variations accurately, recording their sources. A similar project was carried out by the Norwegian scholars Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe , who collected Norwegian fairy tales and published them as Norwegian Folktales , often referred to as Asbjørnsen and Moe . By compiling these stories, they preserved Norway's literary heritage and helped create

7590-507: The Grimms' tale appears to be the only independent German variant. Similarly, the close agreement between the opening of the Grimms' version of Little Red Riding Hood and Perrault's tale points to an influence, although the Grimms' version adds a different ending (perhaps derived from The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids ). Fairy tales tend to take on the color of their location, through

7728-507: The Norwegian written language. Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen traveled through Europe and gathered many well-known fairy tales and created new stories in the fairy tale genre. In Switzerland , Johann David Wyss published The Swiss Family Robinson in 1812, with the aim of teaching children about family values, good husbandry, the uses of the natural world and self-reliance. The book became popular across Europe after it

7866-634: The Origin of Nappy Hair," and 2016, "PeacesongDC." Her children's book Always an Olivia recounts the coming of Herron's Jewish ancestors from Tripoli, Libya , to the Georgia Sea Islands in the Americas. Herron wrote the libretto of the opera Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson , composed by Bruce Adolphe , which was commissioned and premiered by the Washington National Opera and

8004-679: The Russian Alexander Afanasyev (first published in 1866), the Norwegians Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe (first published in 1845), the Romanian Petre Ispirescu (first published in 1874), the English Joseph Jacobs (first published in 1890), and Jeremiah Curtin , an American who collected Irish tales (first published in 1890). Ethnographers collected fairy tales throughout

8142-563: The Stone by T. H. White in 1938. Children's mass paperback books were first released in England in 1940 under the Puffin Books imprint, and their lower prices helped make book buying possible for children during World War II. Enid Blyton 's books have been among the world's bestsellers since the 1930s, selling more than 600 million copies. Blyton's books are still enormously popular and have been translated into almost 90 languages. She wrote on

8280-601: The Tank Engine . Margery Sharp 's series The Rescuers is based on a heroic mouse organisation. The third Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo published War Horse in 1982. Dick King-Smith 's novels include The Sheep-Pig (1984). Diana Wynne Jones wrote the young adult fantasy novel Howl's Moving Castle in 1986. Anne Fine 's Madame Doubtfire (1987) is based around a family with divorced parents. Anthony Horowitz 's Alex Rider series begins with Stormbreaker (2000). Philip Pullman 's His Dark Materials

8418-680: The United States. Mark Twain released Tom Sawyer in 1876. In 1880 another bestseller, Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings , a collection of African American folk tales adapted and compiled by Joel Chandler Harris , appeared. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a plethora of children's novels began featuring realistic, non-magical plotlines. Certain titles received international success such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883), L. M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables (1908), and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1869). Literature for children had developed as

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8556-782: The Year prize, won by The Amber Spyglass . Northern Lights won the Carnegie Medal for children's fiction in 1995. Neil Gaiman wrote the dark fantasy novella Coraline (2002). His 2008 fantasy, The Graveyard Book , traces the story of a boy who is raised by the supernatural occupants of a graveyard. In 2001, Terry Pratchett received the Carnegie Medal (his first major award) for The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents . Cressida Cowell 's How to Train Your Dragon series were published between 2003 and 2015. J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter fantasy sequence of seven novels chronicles

8694-515: The ability to translate the ancient language. Her scholarship includes work on African-American Judaica . Her scholarship also includes work on children's literature, multicultural literature, and Star Trek . Herron is currently developing Epicenter Stories to assist in her work with children, literacy , and multiculturalism . Children%27s literature Children's literature can be traced to traditional stories like fairy tales , which have only been identified as children's literature since

8832-603: The adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter . The series began with Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997 and ended with the seventh and final book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in 2007; becoming the best selling book-series in history . The series has been translated into 67 languages, so placing Rowling among the most translated authors in history. While Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe in 1719 (spawning so many imitations it defined

8970-665: The alphabet, vowels, consonants, double letters, and syllables before providing a religious rhyme of the alphabet, beginning "In Adam's fall We sinned all...", and continues through the alphabet. It also contained religious maxims, acronyms , spelling help and other educational items, all decorated by woodcuts . In 1634, the Pentamerone from Italy became the first major published collection of European folk tales. Charles Perrault began recording fairy tales in France, publishing his first collection in 1697. They were not well received among

9108-457: The beginning of the mass circulation of Robin stories. Fairy tale A fairy tale (alternative names include fairytale , fairy story , household tale , magic tale , or wonder tale ) is a short story that belongs to the folklore genre . Such stories typically feature magic , enchantments , and mythical or fanciful beings. In most cultures, there is no clear line separating myth from folk or fairy tale; all these together form

9246-504: The body of his children's books." Professor Grenby writes, "Newbery has become known as the 'father of children's literature' chiefly because he was able to show that publishing children's books could be a commercial success." The improvement in the quality of books for children and the diversity of topics he published helped make Newbery the leading producer of children's books in his time. He published his own books as well as those by authors such as Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith ;

9384-1000: The body of written works and accompanying illustrations produced in order to entertain or instruct young people. The genre encompasses a wide range of works, including acknowledged classics of world literature , picture books and easy-to-read stories written exclusively for children, and fairy tales , lullabies , fables , folk songs , and other primarily orally transmitted materials or more specifically defined as fiction , non-fiction , poetry , or drama intended for and used by children and young people. One writer on children's literature defines it as "all books written for children, excluding works such as comic books , joke books, cartoon books , and non-fiction works that are not intended to be read from front to back, such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference materials". However, others would argue that children's comics should also be included: "Children's Literature studies has traditionally treated comics fitfully and superficially despite

9522-552: The booklets as well. Johanna Bradley says, in From Chapbooks to Plum Cake , that chapbooks kept imaginative stories from being lost to readers under the strict Puritan influence of the time. Hornbooks also appeared in England during this time, teaching children basic information such as the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer . These were brought from England to the American colonies in

9660-734: The children's classic The Wind in the Willows and the Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell 's first book, Scouting for Boys , was published. Inspiration for Frances Hodgson Burnett 's novel The Secret Garden (1910) was the Great Maytham Hall Garden in Kent. While fighting in the trenches for the British Army in World War I, Hugh Lofting created the character of Doctor Dolittle , who appears in

9798-405: The children's window of tolerance". These fairy tales teach children how to deal with certain social situations and helps them to find their place in society. Fairy tales teach children other important lessons too. For example, Tsitsani et al. carried out a study on children to determine the benefits of fairy tales. Parents of the children who took part in the study found that fairy tales, especially

9936-435: The choice of motifs, the style in which they are told, and the depiction of character and local color. The Brothers Grimm believed that European fairy tales derived from the cultural history shared by all Indo-European peoples and were therefore ancient, far older than written records. This view is supported by research by the anthropologist Jamie Tehrani and the folklorist Sara Graca Da Silva using phylogenetic analysis ,

10074-516: The classroom. Nappy Hair was originally planned as a chapter of an adult book, is influenced by the epic tradition and African praise tradition. Herron edited the papers of Angelina Weld Grimke for Oxford University Press . Many of her writings, including her multimedia novel in progress, " Asenath and Our Song of Songs ", refer to the intersections between Judaic and African cultures. Textual portions of " Asenath and Our Song of Songs " were published as separate novels in 2014, "Asenath and

10212-399: The color in them, triggered their child's imagination as they read them. Jungian Analyst and fairy tale scholar Marie Louise Von Franz interprets fairy tales based on Jung's view of fairy tales as a spontaneous and naive product of soul, which can only express what soul is. That means, she looks at fairy tales as images of different phases of experiencing the reality of the soul. They are

10350-452: The common elements in fairy tales found spread over continents. One is that a single point of origin generated any given tale, which then spread over the centuries; the other is that such fairy tales stem from common human experience and therefore can appear separately in many different origins. Fairy tales with very similar plots, characters, and motifs are found spread across many different cultures. Many researchers hold this to be caused by

10488-490: The concept of childhood , that a separate genre of children's literature began to emerge, with its own divisions, expectations, and canon . The earliest of these books were educational books, books on conduct, and simple ABCs—often decorated with animals, plants, and anthropomorphic letters. In 1962, French historian Philippe Ariès argues in his book Centuries of Childhood that the modern concept of childhood only emerged in recent times. He explains that children were in

10626-457: The concept of childhood began to emerge in Europe. Adults saw children as separate beings, innocent and in need of protection and training by the adults around them. The English philosopher John Locke developed his theory of the tabula rasa in his 1690 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . In Locke's philosophy, tabula rasa was the theory that the (human) mind is at birth a "blank slate" without rules for processing data, and that data

10764-527: The content (the weird adventures of a young girl in a fantasy land), but also the origin of the tales as both are dedicated and given to a daughter of the author's friends. The shift to a modern genre of children's literature occurred in the mid-19th century; didacticism of a previous age began to make way for more humorous, child-oriented books, more attuned to the child's imagination. The availability of children's literature greatly increased as well, as paper and printing became widely available and affordable,

10902-418: The conversations consisted of literature, mores, taste, and etiquette, whereby the speakers all endeavoured to portray ideal situations in the most effective oratorical style that would gradually have a major effect on literary forms." Many 18th-century folklorists attempted to recover the "pure" folktale, uncontaminated by literary versions. Yet while oral fairy tales likely existed for thousands of years before

11040-437: The creation of a number of nineteenth-century fantasy and fairy tales for children which featured magic objects and talking animals. Another influence on this shift in attitudes came from Puritanism , which stressed the importance of individual salvation. Puritans were concerned with the spiritual welfare of their children, and there was a large growth in the publication of "good godly books" aimed squarely at children. Some of

11178-503: The cruelty of older fairy tales as indicative of psychological conflicts, strongly criticized this expurgation, because it weakened their usefulness to both children and adults as ways of symbolically resolving issues. Fairy tales do teach children how to deal with difficult times. To quote Rebecca Walters (2017, p. 56) "Fairytales and folktales are part of the cultural conserve that can be used to address children's fears   …. and give them some role training in an approach that honors

11316-408: The economy and concision of the tales. Originally, stories that would contemporarily be considered fairy tales were not marked out as a separate genre. The German term " Märchen " stems from the old German word " Mär ", which means news or tale. The word " Märchen " is the diminutive of the word " Mär ", therefore it means a "little story". Together with the common beginning " once upon

11454-474: The eighteenth century, and songs, part of a wider oral tradition , which adults shared with children before publishing existed. The development of early children's literature, before printing was invented, is difficult to trace. Even after printing became widespread, many classic "children's" tales were originally created for adults and later adapted for a younger audience. Since the fifteenth century much literature has been aimed specifically at children, often with

11592-433: The fairy tale Momotarō . Jack Zipes has spent many years working to make the older traditional stories accessible to modern readers and their children. Many fairy tales feature an absentee mother, as an example " Beauty and the Beast ", " The Little Mermaid ", " Little Red Riding Hood " and " Donkeyskin ", where the mother is deceased or absent and unable to help the heroines. Mothers are depicted as absent or wicked in

11730-403: The fairy tale is a distinct genre within the larger category of folktale, the definition that marks a work as a fairy tale is a source of considerable dispute. The term itself comes from the translation of Madame D'Aulnoy's Conte de fées , first used in her collection in 1697. Common parlance conflates fairy tales with beast fables and other folktales, and scholars differ on the degree to which

11868-655: The fairy tales served an important function: disguising the rebellious subtext of the stories and sliding them past the court censors. Critiques of court life (and even of the king) were embedded in extravagant tales and in dark, sharply dystopian ones. Not surprisingly, the tales by women often featured young (but clever) aristocratic girls whose lives were controlled by the arbitrary whims of fathers, kings, and elderly wicked fairies, as well as tales in which groups of wise fairies (i.e., intelligent, independent women) stepped in and put all to rights. The salon tales as they were originally written and published have been preserved in

12006-455: The first "English masterpiece written for children" and as a founding book in the development of fantasy literature, its publication opened the "First Golden Age" of children's literature in Britain and Europe that continued until the early 1900s. The fairy-tale absurdity of Wonderland has solid historical ground as a satire of the serious problems of the Victorian era. Lewis Carroll is ironic about

12144-752: The first famous Western fairy tales are those of Aesop (6th century BC) in ancient Greece . Scholarship points out that Medieval literature contains early versions or predecessors of later known tales and motifs, such as the grateful dead , The Bird Lover or the quest for the lost wife. Recognizable folktales have also been reworked as the plot of folk literature and oral epics. Jack Zipes writes in When Dreams Came True , "There are fairy tale elements in Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , Edmund Spenser 's The Faerie Queene , and in many of William Shakespeare plays." King Lear can be considered

12282-405: The first modern children's book, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book was the first children's publication aimed at giving enjoyment to children, containing a mixture of rhymes, picture stories and games for pleasure. Newbery believed that play was a better enticement to children's good behavior than physical discipline, and the child was to record his or her behaviour daily. The book was child–sized with

12420-503: The forms of Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella . Although Straparola's, Basile's and Perrault's collections contain the oldest known forms of various fairy tales, on the stylistic evidence, all the writers rewrote the tales for literary effect. In the mid-17th century, a vogue for magical tales emerged among the intellectuals who frequented the salons of Paris. These salons were regular gatherings hosted by prominent aristocratic women, where women and men could gather together to discuss

12558-463: The garden door at night and entering into a different age. William Golding 's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies focuses on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited island and their disastrous attempt to govern themselves. Roald Dahl wrote children's fantasy novels which were often inspired from experiences from his childhood, with often unexpected endings, and unsentimental, dark humour. Dahl

12696-460: The genre of fantasy, many works that would now be classified as fantasy were termed "fairy tales", including Tolkien's The Hobbit , George Orwell 's Animal Farm , and L. Frank Baum 's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . Indeed, Tolkien's "On Fairy-Stories" includes discussions of world-building and is considered a vital part of fantasy criticism. Although fantasy, particularly the subgenre of fairytale fantasy , draws heavily on fairy tale motifs,

12834-819: The genre rather than fairy tale , a practice given weight by the definition of Thompson in his 1977 [1946] edition of The Folktale : "...a tale of some length involving a succession of motifs or episodes. It moves in an unreal world without definite locality or definite creatures and is filled with the marvellous. In this never-never land, humble heroes kill adversaries, succeed to kingdoms and marry princesses." The characters and motifs of fairy tales are simple and archetypal: princesses and goose-girls ; youngest sons and gallant princes ; ogres , giants , dragons , and trolls ; wicked stepmothers and false heroes ; fairy godmothers and other magical helpers , often talking horses, or foxes, or birds ; glass mountains; and prohibitions and breaking of prohibitions. Although

12972-427: The genres are now regarded as distinct. The fairy tale, told orally, is a sub-class of the folktale . Many writers have written in the form of the fairy tale. These are the literary fairy tales, or Kunstmärchen . The oldest forms, from Panchatantra to the Pentamerone , show considerable reworking from the oral form. The Grimm brothers were among the first to try to preserve the features of oral tales. Yet

13110-536: The history of European children's literature was largely written in Germany." The Brothers Grimm preserved and published the traditional tales told in Germany . They were so popular in their home country that modern, realistic children's literature began to be looked down on there. This dislike of non-traditional stories continued there until the beginning of the next century. In addition to their collection of stories,

13248-628: The history of their development is necessarily obscure and blurred. Fairy tales appear, now and again, in written literature throughout literate cultures, as in The Golden Ass , which includes Cupid and Psyche ( Roman , 100–200 AD), or the Panchatantra ( India 3rd century BC), but it is unknown to what extent these reflect the actual folk tales even of their own time. The stylistic evidence indicates that these, and many later collections, reworked folk tales into literary forms. What they do show

13386-500: The idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon." Albert Einstein once showed how important he believed fairy tales were for children's intelligence in

13524-417: The importance of comics as a global phenomenon associated with children". The International Companion Encyclopedia of Children's Literature notes that "the boundaries of genre... are not fixed but blurred". Sometimes, no agreement can be reached about whether a given work is best categorized as literature for adults or children. Some works defy easy categorization. J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series

13662-404: The issues of the day. In the 1630s, aristocratic women began to gather in their own living rooms, salons, to discuss the topics of their choice: arts and letters, politics, and social matters of immediate concern to the women of their class: marriage, love, financial and physical independence, and access to education. This was a time when women were barred from receiving a formal education. Some of

13800-413: The late sixteenth century. An early example is ABC-Book , an alphabet book published by Ivan Fyodorov in 1571. The first picture book published in Russia, Karion Istomin 's The Illustrated Primer , appeared in 1694. Peter the Great 's interest in modernizing his country through Westernization helped Western children's literature dominate the field through the eighteenth century. Catherine

13938-755: The latter may have written The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes , Newbery's most popular book. Another philosopher who influenced the development of children's literature was Jean-Jacques Rousseau , who argued that children should be allowed to develop naturally and joyously. His idea of appealing to a children's natural interests took hold among writers for children. Popular examples included Thomas Day 's The History of Sandford and Merton , four volumes that embody Rousseau's theories. Furthermore, Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth 's Practical Education : The History of Harry and Lucy (1780) urged children to teach themselves. Rousseau's ideas also had great influence in Germany, especially on German Philanthropism ,

14076-521: The literary forms, there is no pure folktale, and each literary fairy tale draws on folk traditions, if only in parody. This makes it impossible to trace forms of transmission of a fairy tale. Oral story-tellers have been known to read literary fairy tales to increase their own stock of stories and treatments. The oral tradition of the fairy tale came long before the written page. Tales were told or enacted dramatically, rather than written down, and handed down from generation to generation. Because of this,

14214-523: The literature of preliterate societies. Fairy tales may be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicit moral tales, including beast fables . Prevalent elements include dragons , dwarfs , elves , fairies , giants , gnomes , goblins , griffins , merfolk , monsters , monarchy , pixies , talking animals , trolls , unicorns , witches , wizards , magic , and enchantments . In less technical contexts,

14352-513: The mid-seventeenth century. The first such book was a catechism for children, written in verse by the Puritan John Cotton . Known as Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes , it was published in 1646, appearing both in England and Boston . Another early book, The New England Primer , was in print by 1691 and used in schools for 100 years. The primer begins with "The young Infant's or Child's morning Prayer" and evening prayer. It then shows

14490-453: The more general term folk tale that covered a wide variety of oral tales". Jack Zipes also attributes this shift to changing sociopolitical conditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that led to the trivialization of these stories by the upper classes. Roots of the genre come from different oral stories passed down in European cultures. The genre was first marked out by writers of

14628-405: The most gifted women writers of the period came out of these early salons (such as Madeleine de Scudéry and Madame de Lafayette ), which encouraged women's independence and pushed against the gender barriers that defined their lives. The salonnières argued particularly for love and intellectual compatibility between the sexes, opposing the system of arranged marriages. Sometime in the middle of

14766-492: The most popular contemporary versions of tales like " Rapunzel ", " Snow White ", " Cinderella " and " Hansel and Gretel ", however, some lesser known tales or variants such as those found in volumes edited by Angela Carter and Jane Yolen depict mothers in a more positive light. Carter's protagonist in The Bloody Chamber is an impoverished piano student married to a Marquis who was much older than herself to "banish

14904-535: The most popular works were by James Janeway , but the most enduring book from this movement, still read today, especially in modernised versions, is The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan . Chapbooks , pocket-sized pamphlets that were often folded instead of being stitched, were published in Britain; illustrated by woodblock printing , these inexpensive booklets reprinted popular ballads , historical re-tellings, and folk tales. Though not specifically published for children at this time, young people enjoyed

15042-501: The narrative is perceived both by teller and hearers as being grounded in historical truth. However, unlike legends and epics , fairy tales usually do not contain more than superficial references to religion and to actual places, people, and events; they take place " once upon a time " rather than in actual times. Fairy tales occur both in oral and in literary form ( literary fairy tale ); the name "fairy tale" (" conte de fées " in French)

15180-410: The opening of Children's Literature: A Reader's History from Aesop to Harry Potter , says, "This book presents a history of what children have heard and read.... The history I write of is a history of reception ." Early children's literature consisted of spoken stories, songs, and poems, used to educate, instruct, and entertain children. It was only in the eighteenth century, with the development of

15318-514: The past not considered as greatly different from adults and were not given significantly different treatment. As evidence for this position, he notes that, apart from instructional and didactic texts for children written by clerics like the Venerable Bede and Ælfric of Eynsham , there was a lack of any genuine literature aimed specifically at children before the 18th century. Other scholars have qualified this viewpoint by noting that there

15456-410: The population grew and literacy rates improved. Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes appeared in 1857, and is considered to be the founding book in the school story tradition. However, it was Lewis Carroll 's fantasy, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , published in 1865 in England, that signaled the change in writing style for children to an imaginative and empathetic one. Regarded as

15594-525: The presence of fairies and/or similarly mythical beings (e.g., elves , goblins , trolls , giants, huge monsters, or mermaids) should be taken as a differentiator. Vladimir Propp , in his Morphology of the Folktale , criticized the common distinction between "fairy tales" and "animal tales" on the grounds that many tales contained both fantastic elements and animals. Nevertheless, to select works for his analysis, Propp used all Russian folktales classified as

15732-435: The presence of magic as the feature by which fairy tales can be distinguished from other sorts of folktales. Davidson and Chaudri identify "transformation" as the key feature of the genre. From a psychological point of view, Jean Chiriac argued for the necessity of the fantastic in these narratives. In terms of aesthetic values, Italo Calvino cited the fairy tale as a prime example of "quickness" in literature, because of

15870-435: The prim and all-out regulated life of the "golden" Victorian century. One other noteworthy publication was Mark Twain 's book Tom Sawyer (1876), which was one of the first "boy books", intended for children but enjoyed by both children and adults alike. These were classified as such for the themes they contained, consisting of fighting and work. Another important book of that decade was The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for

16008-467: The production of adventure fiction for boys. This inspired writers who normally catered to adult audiences to write for children, a notable example being Robert Louis Stevenson 's classic pirate story Treasure Island (1883). In the years after the First World War, writers such as Arthur Ransome developed the adventure genre by setting the adventure in Britain rather than distant countries. In

16146-456: The quote "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales." The adaptation of fairy tales for children continues. Walt Disney 's influential Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was largely (although certainly not solely) intended for the children's market. The anime Magical Princess Minky Momo draws on

16284-491: The same psychic fact, but a fact so complex and far-reaching and so difficult for us to realize in all its different aspects that hundreds of tales and thousands of repetitions with a musician's variation are needed until this unknown fact is delivered into consciousness; and even then the theme is not exhausted. This unknown fact is what Jung calls the Self, which is the psychic reality of the collective unconscious. [...] Every archetype

16422-445: The simpler riddle might argue greater antiquity. Folklorists of the "Finnish" (or historical-geographical) school attempted to place fairy tales to their origin, with inconclusive results. Sometimes influence, especially within a limited area and time, is clearer, as when considering the influence of Perrault's tales on those collected by the Brothers Grimm. Little Briar-Rose appears to stem from Perrault's The Sleeping Beauty , as

16560-431: The spectre of poverty". The story is a variant on Bluebeard , a tale about a wealthy man who murders numerous young women. Carter's protagonist, who is unnamed, describes her mother as "eagle-featured" and "indomitable". Her mother is depicted as a woman who is prepared for violence, instead of hiding from it or sacrificing herself to it. The protagonist recalls how her mother kept an "antique service revolver" and once "shot

16698-706: The spread of such tales, as people repeat tales they have heard in foreign lands, although the oral nature makes it impossible to trace the route except by inference. Folklorists have attempted to determine the origin by internal evidence, which can not always be clear; Joseph Jacobs , comparing the Scottish tale The Ridere of Riddles with the version collected by the Brothers Grimm, The Riddle , noted that in The Ridere of Riddles one hero ends up polygamously married, which might point to an ancient custom, but in The Riddle ,

16836-464: The stories printed under the Grimm name have been considerably reworked to fit the written form. Literary fairy tales and oral fairy tales freely exchanged plots, motifs, and elements with one another and with the tales of foreign lands. The literary fairy tale came into fashion during the 17th century, developed by aristocratic women as a parlour game. This, in turn, helped to maintain the oral tradition. According to Jack Zipes , "The subject matter of

16974-451: The story, as when Robin McKinley retold Donkeyskin as the novel Deerskin , with emphasis on the abusive treatment the father of the tale dealt to his daughter. Sometimes, especially in children's literature, fairy tales are retold with a twist simply for comic effect, such as The Stinky Cheese Man by Jon Scieszka and The ASBO Fairy Tales by Chris Pilbeam. A common comic motif is

17112-411: The subject of African-American Jews. Her debut novel, Thereafter Johnnie , a semi-autobiographical portrayal of African-American life, was critically well received. Her critically acclaimed picture book Nappy Hair , a call-and-response story based on her own experiences as a child, was the cause of massive controversy when a New York City public school teacher was accused of racism after using it in

17250-443: The tale through use of the erotic, explicit sexuality, dark and/or comic themes, female empowerment, fetish and BDSM , multicultural, and heterosexual characters. Cleis Press has released several fairy tale-themed erotic anthologies, including Fairy Tale Lust , Lustfully Ever After , and A Princess Bound . It may be hard to lay down the rule between fairy tales and fantasies that use fairy tale motifs, or even whole plots, but

17388-469: The tales in later editions to make them more acceptable, which ensured their sales and the later popularity of their work. Such literary forms did not merely draw from the folktale, but also influenced folktales in turn. The Brothers Grimm rejected several tales for their collection, though told orally to them by Germans, because the tales derived from Perrault, and they concluded they were thereby French and not German tales; an oral version of " Bluebeard "

17526-403: The tales that servants, or other women of lower class, would tell to children. Indeed, a novel of that time, depicting a countess's suitor offering to tell such a tale, has the countess exclaim that she loves fairy tales as if she were still a child. Among the late précieuses , Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont redacted a version of Beauty and the Beast for children, and it is her tale that

17664-452: The term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy-tale ending" (a happy ending ) or "fairy-tale romance ". Colloquially, the term "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any far-fetched story or tall tale ; it is used especially to describe any story that not only not true, but also could not possibly be true. Legends are perceived as real within their culture; fairy tales may merge into legends, where

17802-471: The tradition of literary fairy tales. Andersen's work sometimes drew on old folktales, but more often deployed fairytale motifs and plots in new tales. MacDonald incorporated fairytale motifs both in new literary fairy tales, such as The Light Princess , and in works of the genre that would become fantasy, as in The Princess and the Goblin or Lilith . Two theories of origins have attempted to explain

17940-417: The witch deduce that she was pregnant, but in subsequent editions carelessly revealed that it was easier to pull up the prince than the witch. On the other hand, in many respects, violence‍—‌particularly when punishing villains‍—‌was increased. Other, later, revisions cut out violence; J.   R.   R.   Tolkien noted that The Juniper Tree often had its cannibalistic stew cut out in

18078-545: The world, finding similar tales in Africa, the Americas, and Australia; Andrew Lang was able to draw on not only the written tales of Europe and Asia, but those collected by ethnographers, to fill his "coloured" fairy books series . They also encouraged other collectors of fairy tales, as when Yei Theodora Ozaki created a collection, Japanese Fairy Tales (1908), after encouragement from Lang. Simultaneously, writers such as Hans Christian Andersen and George MacDonald continued

18216-448: Was a literature designed to convey the values, attitudes, and information necessary for children within their cultures, such as the Play of Daniel from the twelfth century. Pre-modern children's literature, therefore, tended to be of a didactic and moralistic nature, with the purpose of conveying conduct -related, educational and religious lessons. During the seventeenth century,

18354-507: Was first ascribed to them by Madame d'Aulnoy in the late 17th century. Many of today's fairy tales have evolved from centuries-old stories that have appeared, with variations, in multiple cultures around the world. The history of the fairy tale is particularly difficult to trace because only the literary forms can survive. Still, according to researchers at universities in Durham and Lisbon , such stories may date back thousands of years, some to

18492-1001: Was inspired to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), featuring the eccentric chocolatier Willy Wonka , having grown up near two chocolate makers in England who often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into the other's factory. His other works include James and the Giant Peach (1961), Fantastic Mr. Fox (1970), The BFG (1982), The Witches (1983), and Matilda (1988). Starting in 1958, Michael Bond published more than twenty humorous stories about Paddington Bear . Boarding schools in literature are centred on older pre-adolescent and adolescent school life, and are most commonly set in English boarding schools . Popular school stories from this period include Ronald Searle 's comic St Trinian's (1949–1953) and his illustrations for Geoffrey Willans 's Molesworth series, Jill Murphy 's The Worst Witch , and

18630-567: Was published in Switzerland in 1880 and 1881. In the US, children's publishing entered a period of growth after the American Civil War in 1865. Boys' book writer Oliver Optic published over 100 books. In 1868, the "epoch-making" Little Women , the fictionalized autobiography of Louisa May Alcott , was published. This " coming of age " story established the genre of realistic family books in

18768-414: Was thus rejected, and the tale of Little Briar Rose , clearly related to Perrault's " Sleeping Beauty ", was included only because Jacob Grimm convinced his brother that the figure of Brynhildr , from much earlier Norse mythology , proved that the sleeping princess was authentically Germanic folklore. This consideration of whether to keep Sleeping Beauty reflected a belief common among folklorists of

18906-497: Was translated into French by Isabelle de Montolieu . E. T. A. Hoffmann 's tale " The Nutcracker and the Mouse King " was published in 1816 in a German collection of stories for children, Kinder-Märchen . It is the first modern short story to introduce bizarre, odd and grotesque elements in children's literature and thereby anticipates Lewis Carroll's tale, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland . There are not only parallels concerning

19044-410: Was written and marketed for children, but it is also popular among adults. The series' extreme popularity led The New York Times to create a separate bestseller list for children's books. Despite the widespread association of children's literature with picture books, spoken narratives existed before printing , and the root of many children's tales go back to ancient storytellers. Seth Lerer , in

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