FAIRY TALE REFERENCE SOURCES
(excerpts from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure to obtain permission from the copyright holder if the material is not in the public domain)

1) Fairy Tales: the Greenhaven Press Companion to Literary Movements and Genres
(ISBN 0-7377-0417-9)

2) The Witch Must Die : How Fairy Tales Shape Our Lives by Sheldon Cashdan. It deals particularly with the Fairy Tales that are healing and transformational for young children. Cashdan offers elegant analyses of how fairy tales speak to basic human concerns, highlighting the roles played by iconic images like glass slippers, gingerbread houses, evil stepmothers, and sorcery. He shows how fairy tales differ from culture to culture, what happens when classic fairy tales are "Disneyfied," and why it is that fairy tales can have a surprisingly salutary effect on adult readers. Not since Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment has the underlying significance of fantasy and fairy tales been so insightfully and entertainingly mined.

(This web page updated 9/3/02)