Myths

This is a collection of fairy tales, retold by Sabine Baring-Gould. The collection contains such well-known stories as Cinderella and the Beauty and the Beast, but also tales which are now not as widely known, such as the Yellow Dwarf and the White Cat. – Summary by Carolin

Bears make an appearance in so many fairy tales and fables, it is difficult to imagine a fairy-tale world without them. However, in most of those fairy tales, the bear is just a side-character. In this volume, Clifton Johnson has collected 18 stories in which the bear takes a lead role. – Summary by Carolin

Wild animals play a big role in many fairy tales, and foxes are some of the best-represented animals in folklore. In this volume, Clifton Johnson has collected stories about foxes from all over the world, adapted for children as bedtime fairy tales. – Summary by Carolin

Remember the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper? the Fox and the Sour Grapes? The Boy who Cried Wolf? These wonderful tales and hundreds more have been passed down to us over the centuries. The man credited with writing them, Aesop, was an Ancient Greek slave born about 620 B.C. Aesop is known as a fabulist or story teller credited with a number of fables shining glaringly true light on our human foibles now collectively known as Aesop’s Fables. Although no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics. Scattered details of Aesop’s life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. A later tradition depicts Aesop as a black Ethiopian. But whatever his history, the fables depict truths about human behavior, our strengths and weakness that have remained true for 2500 years. (Summary from Wikipedia and Phil Chenevert)

Not for the squeamish or for children, these folk-tales are from the Ainu, the somewhat mysterious indigenous people of Japan, thousands of whom still live in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. Ranging over all of the usual themes of folklore, from creation to marriage to war, these stories have a pungent, ribald frankness concerning all aspects of human life that offended their scholarly collector Basil Hall Chamberlain (his apologies to the reader are themselves entertaining) but that make them fresh, provocative, and amusing to the twenty-first century reader. Attention to the Ainu is especially timely because of the revival in Japan of Ainu activism on behalf of indigenous rights, pride, and culture, but are well worth reading for their purely entertainment value.

Alice?s adventures in Wonderland is probably one of the most well known and popular children’s novels in the English language. Written in 1865 by Charles Lutwidge Dodgeson, better known by his pen name ?Lewis Carrol?. Lewis, a mathematician, poet, photographer and inventor, tells a surreal fantasy tale, of Alice, who visits a world of unnatural logic after following a very smart White Rabbit, down a rabbit hole. The world she discovers is inhabited by the strangest and most endearing characters; The ?Mad Hatter?, the sleepy ?Dormouse?, the ?Queen of Hearts? and many more. Every child should insist that this story is read to them! And they will remember it for ever, just like Alice. This book was originally illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. His images are iconic and help to seed the imagination of any little person, no matter how big they are! Download them here: http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/resources/pictures/alices-adventures-in-wonderland/ (Summary by Craig Franklin)

James Willard Schultz, or Apikuni, (1859 ? 1947) was a noted author, explorer, Glacier National Park guide, fur trader and historian of the Blackfoot Indians. Schultz is most noted for his prolific stories about Blackfoot life and his contributions to the naming of prominent features in Glacier National Park. (Summary by Wikipedia)

LibriVox?s Children?s Short Works Collection 010: a collection of 15 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of LibriVox members.

Librivox’s Children’s Short Works Collection 023: a collection of 16 short works for children in the public domain read by a variety of Librivox members. – Summary by Ruth Golding

The story is about a little girl who meets all manner of strange gnomes, fairies and creatures after she goes to sleep at night. She also has two invisible brothers whom she created so as to not be alone while her parents travel for the Crown. The author here produces an alternative version of fairyland to the more traditional European form, that is bizarre, entertaining and funny at the same time. – Summary by phil chenevert and Wikipedia

This is a volume of fairy tales and folk tales from the Cossack people, compiled and translated by Robert Nisbet Bain. The tales are special as most children will not have heard them a hundred times before, and as they take listeners into a different region of the realm of the fairy tale. The Cossacks are a group of people living mostly in what is now Ukraine and Russia. The fairy and folk tales contained in this volume allow a glimpse into both the cultural traditions of the Cossack people, as well as into how this culture was perceived by others. – Summary by Carolin

This is a 1910 edition of the Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen. This volume is nicely mixed, containing both the most famous tales as well as some which are not quite as well-known. The translation is adapted for American readership and in some ways brings a new facet to some of the stories. Listeners may want to have a look at the online text for its beautiful colour illustrations. – Summary by Carolin

This is a collection of well known fairy tales by various authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault and many others. (Summary by Elli)

This book, subtitled “How and Why Tales from Brazilian Folk-Lore”, is a collection of short stories, most of them etiologial myths from Brazilian Indian Folklore. (Summary by Leni)

A collection of short, sweet fairy tales from Brazil, including How the Tiger Got His Stripes, and Why The Bananas Belong to the Monkey. – Summary by Beth Thomas

The stories in this collection come from the oral traditions of the people from Swaziland, Matabeleland (Ndebele people) and Zululand in South Africa. The authors, Mrs. E. J. Bourhill and Mrs. J. B. Drake, or more properly the collectors and editors of the stories assert that: “All the stories in this book are real Fairy Tales, just as much as Jack the Giant-killer or The Sleeping Beauty. By this I mean that they are traditional, handed down by word of mouth. Nobody knows how old they are, or who told them first.” The stories are full of witches and magicians and monsters, as well as heroes and princesses and good and bad rulers. They have done a marvellous job of putting these stories into English but admit that there is much lost in the translation and in not being able to see the storyteller who would not only tell the story but act it out while doing so. Mrs. Bourhill and Mrs. Drake were concerned that, as the way of life and the customs of the people were slowly changing, these wonderful traditional stories might fade away. They thus decided to write them down for posterity. – Summary by Noel Badrian

The group of stories brought together in this volume differ from legends because they have, with one exception,no core fact at the centre, from myths because they make no attempt to personify or explain the forces or processes of nature, from fairy stories because they do not often bring to the stage actors from a different nature from ours…. The stories which make up this volume are closer to experience and come, from the most part, nearer to the every-day happenings of life. (Summary by Hamilton Wright Mabie, from the Introduction)