Welcome to our page on SU Libraries' Folktales, Fairytales, and Folklore reading resources! If you find find regional traditional stories fascinating, this is the page for you. We have selected a few texts to get you started but we have an extensive folklore collection that is shelved on the 3rd and 5th floors of Bird Library.
You can find more fairytales, folktales, and folklore by searching Libraries Search
Favorite Folktales from Around the World
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This collection of 160 tales represents such diverse stories as American Indian legends and others from the Brothers Grimm.
Afro-American Folk Lore
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Mongolian Folktales
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The Republic of Mongolia lies on a high plateau between Russia and China. The raw beauty of its landscape is breathtaking. A proximity to animals and the environment has led to a rich heritage of songs and tales related to nature. This book includes 25 traditional Mongolian folktales. The most ancient date back to the 12th century and are concerned with human relations with the natural world. Others use the whimsicality of animals to describe people's struggles to find a good and decent life. Still others frankly applaud cunning, with, and the ability to survive an unfriendly competition. The immediacy of these stories and illustrations is compelling. The tales should by all rights be read aloud to children. At the same time, the foundations of the rich culture that they describe will be of significance to anyone studying Central Asian history and culture. The stories are vividly illustrated by the papercuts of the Mongolian artists N. Baatarstog. An introduction to the book has been written by the eminent authority on folktales in Mongolia, P. Khorloo, the author of several scholarly volumes and collector of many of these tales in the early part of this century. Hilary Metternich has edited and assembled the book; she is a scholar of Mongolian culture and the wife of the German ambassador in Ulaanbaatar.
One Hundred and Fifty Folk Tales of India
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Thai Tales
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Margaret Read MacDonald, renowned author of more than 15 books on folklore and storytelling, teams up with librarian Supaporn Vathanaprida to present this fascinating folktale collection and introduction to Thai thought. Drawing on memories of her childhood in Northern Thailand, Supaporn shares her tales and comments to help both adults and children understand the surprising world of Thai folklore and culture. The 28 engaging stories show many aspects of the Buddhist worldview in action. Humorous stories, animal tales, teaching tales of Buddhist monks, and tales of amazing magical events that entertain the Thai imagination are included in the collection.
Annotated Hans Christian Andersen
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A richly entertaining and informative collection of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, annotated by one of America's leading folklore scholars. In her most ambitious annotated work to date, Maria Tatar celebrates the stories told by Denmark's "perfect wizard" and re-envisions Hans Christian Andersen as a writer who casts his spell on both children and adults. Andersen's most beloved tales, such as "The Emperor's New Clothes," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Little Mermaid," are now joined by "The Shadow" and "Story of a Mother," mature stories that reveal his literary range and depth. Tatar captures the tales' unrivaled dramatic and visual power, showing exactly how Andersen became one of the world's ten most translated authors, along with Shakespeare, Dickens, and Marx. Lushly illustrated with more than one hundred fifty rare images, many in full color, by artists such as Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac, The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen will captivate readers with annotations that explore the rich social and cultural dimensions of the nineteenth century and construct a compelling portrait of a writer whose stories still fascinate us today.
Irish Folktales
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Here are 125 magnificent folktales collected from anthologies and journals published from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Beginning with tales of the ancient times and continuing through the arrival of the saints in Ireland in the fifth century, the periods of war and family, the Literary Revival championed by William Butler Yeats, and the contemporary era, these robust and funny, sorrowful and heroic stories of kings, ghosts, fairies, treasures, enchanted nature, and witchcraft are set in cities, villages, fields, and forests from the wild western coast to the modern streets of Dublin and Belfast. Edited by Henry Glassie With black-and-white illustrations throughout Part of the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library
Polish Folktales and Folklore
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Wit, humor, and warmth permeate the stories in this collection. Here are more than 50 traditional folktales from the people of Poland, ranging from animal and humorous tales to why stories, tales of magic and the supernatural, and local legends. In addition, you'll find riddles, nursery rhymes, games and activities, recipes, and background information on the land, the people, and the stories-all enhanced by maps and handsome color photos and illustrations. A wonderful addition to the folklore collection, this book provides material that folklorists will wish to study, storytellers will be eager to share with their audiences, and educators will want explore with their students. A delicious assortment of folktales from Poland awaits you in this appealing collection. More than 50 tales range from local legends, animal tales, and magic tales to religious legends, stories of demons and supernatural creatures, humorous tales, and how and why tales-exemplifying the Polish spirit, character, and sense of humor. In addition, you'll find historical background; directions for traditional games, crafts, recipes; and color photographs that depict the people, the land, and the traditions of this fascinating country.
Russian Fairy Tales
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Scandinavian Folk and Fairy Tales
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A collection of folk literature from five countries, with illustrations by native artists.
Folktales of Mexico
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A scholarly retelling of about 80 Mexican folktales.
Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel
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Raphael Patai's (1910-1996) lifelong fascination with Arab folktales began on a Ramadan night in 1933, at a cafe in Jerusalem where, for the first time, he heard a famous ""qassas"", a storyteller, tirelessly relate story after story from his vast repertoire of Arab folktales. In ""Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel"", a collection of 28 tales gathered in Palestine and Israel and one of Patai's last books, Patai explores this rich cultural tradition. He studies tales from three separate times: those recounted by a German scholar in 1910-11, those read over Jerusalem Radio in the winter of 1946-47, and those recorded by the Israeli scholar Yoel Perez in 1982-84. These fables, part of the cultural heritage of a small corner of the Arab world, are translated into an English that remains faithful to the original Arabic text, presenting to foreign readers a sense of the original style and a picture of traditional Arab life and customs, attitudes, social and cultural norms, psychology and values. In their mingling of the everyday and the fabulous, the stories reveal both the embellishments on and the deviations from ordinary life that characterize folklore around the world. The stories tell of the trials and tribulations of ordinary human beings, the struggle between good and evil, rich and poor, and men and women, at different historical moments in response to different stages of modernization. They also describe fantastic creatures, such as animals that speak, encounters between humans and supernatural beings such as jinns and ghouls. Providing insight into Arab culture, Patai offers extensive notes and commentary on particular Arabic phrases and images, as well as the ways of speaking and thinking found among the Arab population, especially the Bedouins, in Palestine and Israel. Patai also places the stories in the context of global folktales, and traces the transformations in the art of storytelling. This collection as a whole presents a colourful slice of traditional Arab life, value, customs, attitudes and sociocultural patterns.
Armenian Folk-Tales and Fables
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Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories
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Warm, humorous, and ironical stories based on middle European Jewish folklore and on the author's childhood memories.
