American Children’s Literature. New York: Routledge.
4 Foster, J., Finnis, E., and Nimon, M. (2005). Bush, City, Cyberspace: The Development of Australian Children’s Literature into the 21st Century. Wagga Wagga, Australia: Charles Sturt University.
5 MacLeod, A.S. (1995). American Childhood: Essays on Children’s Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
6 Moruzi, K. and Smith, M.J. (eds.) (2014). Colonial Girlhood in Literature, Culture and History, 1840–1950. New York: Palgrave.
7 Nelson, C. (1991). Boys Will Be Girls: The Feminine Ethic and British Children’s Fiction, 1857–1917. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
8 Reynolds, K. (2011). Children’s Literature: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3 Folklore in Children’s Literature
Debra Mitts-Smith
My friend told her daughter that they were going to a nature center to see captive wolves. “Will they eat me up?” the little girl asked. My friend could not remember telling her daughter the story of Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Pigs. Yet somehow this three-year-old knew that wolves pose a threat to young animals, including little girls.
Folklore, which conveys cultural and social knowledge to help make sense of the world, social situations, and even the physical environment, includes verbal (i.e. folktales, sayings, and ballads), ritualistic (i.e. parades or ceremonies), and material forms (i.e. jewelry, clothing, pottery) (Toelken 1996, p. 9). Folktales (traditional oral or written tales that have been passed on from generation to generation) are the predominant form of folklore in children’s books. First encountered in childhood, these folktale narratives present a training ground of sorts, passing on cultural heritage as well as more contemporary social values. And while they may entertain, they also provide their audience with the information necessary not only to understand a particular tale, but also to recognize its symbolic uses across various contexts and mediums.
The term “folktale” encompasses several types of tales, including fairy tales or wonder tales, hero tales, sagas or local legends, myths, pourquoi tales, and animal tales (Thompson 1977, p. 9). Although all these subgenres can be found in children’s literature, fairy tales and animal tales are probably the most common folktale narratives in children’s books. Stith Thompson, in his classic work, The Folktale, describes the fairy tale as taking place in an “unreal world” (p. 8), with no specific location in either time or place. J.R.R. Tolkien (1964, p. 38) argues in his essay “On Fairy-stories” that it is a misconception to think that fairy tales are stories about fairies or elves. Instead, fairy refers to the nature of Faërie, that “Perilous Realm,” where the marvelous live and the wondrous happens. Animal tales feature animals that act, think, and talk like humans. The animals are placed in human situations where they interact with each other and sometimes with humans. These tales ascribe particular human behaviors to various animal species. With the repetition of these tales over time, the animals become a kind of shorthand for those behaviors. For instance, foxes represent cunning and slippery behavior while wolves represent physical strength and brutality. These stories often impart specific and clear lessons, morals, or warnings.
Common features of folktales include brevity, conventional opening and closing phrases, and archetypal characterizations that embody certain traits or situations, such as the third son or the wicked stepmother. The dark forest, a giant’s lair, or the beautiful princess evoke powerful images. According to Max Lüthi (1982), a lack of details in folktales helps keep the tales alive by making them flexible and more easily adaptable from one culture to another. Illustrations, which accompany folktales in children’s books, give shape and substance to the characters and setting, seemingly undermining their adaptability. And yet it is the endless range of visual interpretations and possibilities that illustrated print editions offer that helps keep these traditional tales vital.
Although folktales are often relegated to the nursery, as Tolkien complained (1964, p. 58), children were not necessarily the intended audience for folktales. Many tales were bawdy and violent. Tellers shared these tales with whomever was present. Even early print collections were not published with children in mind. For instance, Charles Perrault’s collection of tales, a source text for many children’s books, was originally published as part of a larger cultural debate in late seventeenth-century France. Today, even when children are the intended audience, they are certainly not the sole audience. Adults select, adapt, and illustrate tales that are published as children’s books and shared with children, but critiqued by and studied by adults.
Folktales are often thought of as being an innocent and safe way to impart lessons for young people. The struggle between good and evil or between those in power and the powerless are often at the heart of these tales. Maria Tatar (1987, p. 51) wrote that in the tale of Little Red Riding Hood “strength confronts weakness, and any predatory power can be substituted for the wolf.” This applies to many tales. Petulant fairies, evil stepmothers, witches, giants, and monstrous wolves often plague the protagonists’ journey with violence and cruelty. Folktales are the stuff of nightmares. And yet the situations they depict, including child abandonment, child abuse, domestic violence, and murder, belong to real life.
Often the appeal of traditional tales lies in their subversive nature. They offer alternative possibilities, the “what might be” as opposed to what is. They are the stuff of dreams. Characters who in real life are powerless – the youngest, weakest, and most vulnerable – take center stage. Through goodness, guile, courage, or hard work (and sometimes the help of magical beings), an orphan, the youngest child, or an unloved stepchild overcomes challenges and gains a modicum of power. And yet, these stories do not advocate widespread social change. Instead, they recount the stories of individual underdogs whose courage and suffering are rewarded with power or wealth (Bottigheimer 1987; Zipes 2002).
This chapter focuses on Western European folktales in children’s literature. Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Pigs offer examples to explore the history and research of folktales in children’s books. They are popular tales, representing two of the more popular subgenres of folktales in children’s books: the fairy tale and the animal tale. (For expediency, the term folktale will be used in lieu of finer designations such as fairy tale, animal tale, etc.) Both Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Pigs continue to be told and retold, making them mainstays of the canon of Western European and North American children’s literature.
Putting Tales in Print
During the 1690s, Charles Perrault rewrote popular oral folktales by combining French folk motifs with the more refined language and style of the salons. In 1697, Perrault published Histoires ou contes du temps passé avec des moralités: Contes de ma mère l’Oye (Stories or Tales of Past Times with Morals: Mother Goose Tales), a collection of eight tales, several of which have become mainstays in children’s literature. The tales included “La belle au bois dormant” (“Sleeping Beauty”), “Le petit chaperon rouge” (“Little Red Riding Hood”), “Barbe bleue” (“Bluebeard”), “Cendrillon” (“Cinderella”), “Le petit poucet” (“Tom Thumb”), “Riquet à la houppe” (Riquet with the Tuft), “Le chat botté” (“Puss in Boots”), and “Les Fées” (“The Fairies”). In this collection of tales, Perrault helped to create the style associated with folktales: brief, entertaining prose stories marked by simple plots, eloquent language, and explicit morals (Jones and Schacker 2013, p. 497).
In 1729, Robert Samber translated and published Perrault’s collection of tales into English: Histories or Tales of Past Times: Told by Mother Goose. The first five editions were bilingual and displayed the English translation alongside the French text. The sixth edition, published in 1772, was in English only. By the mid-eighteenth century, inexpensive and ephemeral chapbook editions of Perrault’s tales were common in England, France, and Central Europe.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s efforts to collect German folktales helped foster a general interest