Skip to Main Content

Fairy Tales and Folktales

Resources for your research

Search Tips

Watch out for variant spellings of names of works, characters, etc.

In MLA and other databases, frequently English-language articles use the orignal language name for a work. Example: Nibelungenlied instead of The Song of the Nibelungs.

Use a * to cut off a word at its stem, e.g. Rumpelstil* will retrieve Rumpelstilzchen or Rumpelstiltskin

Type the word AND (or use the second row) if you want to enter more than one word that is not an exact phrase.

If you can't use a star to search for spelling variants, use OR
(brier or briar) and rose

A truly comprehensive search for this family of works would be

(brier or briar) and rose
or
Dornröschen or "Belle au bois dormant" or "sleeping beauty"

Fairy Tales Retold

Books on Fairy Tales

In the Main Stacks, books relevant to this topic cluster in several different areas.

  • Fairy Tales as Folklore are shelved in GR550-560
  • Fairy tales as a general fiction genre are covered in PN3437
  • Specific fairy tales (or other works inspired by them) are shelved throughout P, depending on the nationality and era of the author.

In the Juvenile Books section, books of fairy tales are located in 398.2

Role of Fairy Tales

Reading stories and telling tales to young children is important for language development, but do these stories/tales develop a moral foundation?  Recent research casts doubt:

Lee, Kang, Victoria Talwar, Anjanie McCarthy, Ilana Ross, Angela Evans and Cindy Arruda. "Can Classic Moral Stories Promote Honesty in Children?" Psychological Science 25.8 (2014) : 1630-1636.  Web. 23 Aug. 2014.