believed that traditional folktales formed the basis of that literature. From 1806 to 1813, during the time of the Napoleonic invasions and French occupation of German states, the Brothers Grimm, with the aim of saving the oral folktales of the German volk, began collecting tales. In 1812 and 1815, they published Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Nursery and Household Tales), a scholarly work in two volumes containing 156 tales.
Beginning with the 1819 second edition, Wilhelm Grimm continued to edit, revise, and incorporate new tales. Wilhelm’s revisions, which included the removal of coarse language and scenes and the insertion of more pedantic language, middle-class morals, gendered role models, and Christian values, helped transform this scholarly undertaking into a major source of tales appropriate for the general public, including children (Bottigheimer 1987; Tatar 1987; Zipes 2002).
In 1823, Edgar P. Taylor’s English translation of the Grimms’ tales was published. It featured illustrations by George Cruikshank. The popularity and financial success of this English illustrated edition, known as German Popular Stories, inspired the Grimms to produce a smaller, illustrated edition of their work. Comprised of 50 tales with illustrations by their brother Ludwig Emil Grimm, this Kleine Ausgabe, or Small Edition, was aimed at a more general audience, including children. From 1825 to 1858, the Grimms published 10 editions of this smaller work.
The Grimms’ collection of tales included “Little Red Cap,” a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. The Grimms’ version differs from Perrault’s version in its tone, characterization, and plot. Perrault’s tale ends with the wolf devouring the little girl. In the Grimms’ version, a hunter rescues both the girl and the grandmother from the sleeping wolf’s belly. The girl and the grandmother then kill the wolf by filling his belly with stones. This resolution recalls the ending to another tale in the Grimms’ collection, “The Wolf and the Seven Kid Goats.” By changing the ending, the Grimms also changed the tone of the tale, making it less cruel (the girl and the grandmother survive) but more didactic than Perrault’s tale. Before sending her daughter on her way, the mother tells her what she should and should not do, making it clear that if Little Red Cap fails to heed her mother’s instructions, she will be punished. In the 1857 edition, the Grimms lengthened the tale to include a second meeting with a second wolf. This time, however, both the little girl and her grandmother knew how to deal with the wolf.
Subsequent adaptors and illustrators of this tale base their text, plot, and ending on either Perrault’s “Little Red Riding Hood” or the Grimms’ “Little Red Cap.” English-language retellings are varied and lack consistency in translation of the titles. For instance, many versions that recount the Grimms’ version (the girl and her grandmother are rescued) bear the title Little Red Riding Hood. There are also variations on the Grimms’ ending. In 1843, Sir Henry Cole, writing under the pseudonym Felix Summerly, adapted “Little Red Riding Hood” with color printed illustrations. His introduction to the tale praises Little Red Riding Hood’s moral and religious qualities while his ending introduces the girl’s father, who rescues her from the wolf. Walter Crane’s 1875 toy book makes several key changes to the tale. His visual rendering of the wolf transforms Perrault’s aristocratic wolf into a lower class, rustic wolf. Crane’s Little Red Riding Hood is also rescued – this time by a clearly well-heeled hunter – before the wolf can devour her.
Neither Perrault’s nor the Grimms’ collections contain the story of The Three Pigs. The history of this tale points to English, Italian, and North American origins. Most sources, including the nineteenth-century English folklorist Joseph Jacobs, cite James Orchard Halliwell’s fifth edition of The Nursery Rhymes of England (1853) as containing the first print version of the tale. However, the afterword of a reproduction of Pigweenie the Wise or, The History of a Wolf and Three Pigs (1830) points to this story in verse as the first known print version of The Three Pigs (Graham and Shefrin 1988). It also cites the unpublished manuscript Adventures of the Little Pigs from Nursery Traditions of Boulton & Raymond Families (1850) by C. Sadleir-Bruère as predating Halliwell’s story.
The two main print versions of this tale differ on the fates of the pigs. In one version, the wolf blows down the houses of straw and sticks and devours the resident cowering pigs. The third pig, who built his house with bricks, withstands the wolf’s assault. With the death of the first two pigs, the story shifts to a duel between the surviving pig and the increasingly frustrated wolf. The pig outwits the wolf, and the tale ends with the wolf plunging down the pig’s chimney, where he is either boiled in oil (or water) or consumed by the flames. In another version of this tale, the first two pigs survive the wolf’s onslaughts by seeking refuge in their sibling’s house. When the wolf arrives at the house of brick, the third pig invites the wolf to climb down the chimney. He does and is burned alive.
During the nineteenth century, illustrated folktales and folktale anthologies intended for children became increasingly common. As Avery and Kinnell (1995, p. 71) wrote, “The fairy tale had become the province of children, and furthermore was being separately presented from the clearly educational tales for children.” While many of these works featured tales found in the collections of Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, folktales from a wider range of countries were also adapted and published for children. Works include Benjamin Tabart’s Cinderella: or the Little Glass Slipper (1804) and his 1809 edition of Perrault’s tales for Collection of Popular Stories for the Nursery; John Harris’s illustrated Cinderella (1808) and Bluebeard (1808); Lucy Crane’s translation of Household Stories, illustrated by Walter Crane (1882); and Andrew Lang’s 12-volume Fairy Book series (1889–1910).
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, a new format, the toy book (precursor of picturebooks) emerged. With text and full-page color illustrations on each page, toy books retold some of the most popular tales with images by some of the best illustrators. The best examples include Walter Crane’s The Sleeping Beauty (1874), The Frog Prince (1874), The Beauty and the Beast (1875), and The Blue Beard Picture Book: Containing Blue Beard, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk (1875); and Kate Greenaway’s Diamonds and Toads (1867) and The Pied Piper of Hamlin retold by Robert Browning (1888).
During the twentieth century, the picturebook became the main folktale format in children’s books. These works not only recount the tales, but also feature artwork reflecting a range of styles and media. The images in these works create visual narratives that are as essential to the retellings as the texts. Illustrators of several of these works have been recipients of the Caldecott Medal, which is awarded to the most prestigious American picturebook for young people. Examples include Marcia Brown’s Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper (1955), Trina Schart Hyman’s Little Red Riding Hood (1983), Paul O. Zelinsky’s Rapunzel (1983), Ed Young’s Lon Po Po: A Chinese Red Riding Hood (1989), and David Wiesner’s The Three Pigs (2001).
In the post-World War II years, the founding of the United Nations helped spur a growing interest in folktales from Africa and Asia (Bader 2010). In 1947, anthropologists Harold Courlander and George Herzog published a collection of the folktales from West Africa for children: The Cow-Tail Switch and Other West African Stories. In the introduction to their collection, they identified the regions where they had heard the tales and connected some of these tales to several of the Brer Rabbit tales brought to the New World by enslaved people (Bader 2010). Since the 1970s there has been an increase in the publication of folklore for children that is not derived from white European sources. Important works include Verna Aardema’s 1975 adaption of African and African American stories for children in Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears with illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon and Julius Lester’s 1987–1990 retelling of the Uncle Remus stories with illustrations by Jerry Pinkney.
Parodies of fairy tales (i.e. William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring [1855], Lewis Carroll’s Alice Adventures in Wonderland [1865], Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales [1888], and Kenneth Grahame’s The Reluctant Dragon [1898]) became an established genre in children’s books during the nineteenth century. Since the 1980s, the picturebook has become an important platform for parodies of European folktales. Drawing on a range of textual and visual narrative techniques, including