Fairy tale facts for kids

1865 picture of Tom Thumb and the Giant

A fairy tale is an English language expression for a kind of short story. It has the same meaning as the French expression conte de fée or Conte merveilleux, the German word Märchen, the Italian fiaba, the Polish baśń, the Russian сказка or the Swedish saga. These stories are not all directly about fairies, but they are different from legends and traditions (which usually say that the stories are true) and directly moral stories. There are usually fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants or gnomes in fairy tales, and usually magic.

Fairy tales can also mean unusual happiness (for example, the expression "fairy tale ending", meaning a happy ending, even though not all fairy tales have a happy ending). Also, "fairy tale" can simply mean any unbelievable story.

Where demons and witches are seen as real, fairy tales can sometimes be similar to legends, where the story is claimed to be historically true. However, differently from legends and epics, they usually do not specifically mention religion and actual places, people, and events. They also do not say exactly when it happened. Instead, they say that the story happened "once upon a time".

Fairy tales are found in oral form (passed on from mouth to mouth) and in literary form (written down). Fairy tales' histories are hard to find. This is because only written fairy tales can be passed on for a long time. Still, literary works show that there has been fairy tales for thousands of years. Many fairy tales today have are based on very old stories that have appeared, though in different ways, in many different cultures around the world. Fairy tales, and works based on from fairy tales, are still written today.

At first, fairy tales were for both adults and children, but now children are mostly connected with fairy tales. Examples of traditional old fairy tales are Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood and "The Three Little Pigs". There can also be new fairy tales written by an author, like The Little Mermaid or Pinocchio. New fairy tales were for example written by Hans Christian Andersen, James Thurber and Oscar Wilde.

History

Fairy tales were passed down by speaking of it from person to person before writing was developed. Stories were told or acted out dramatically. Because of this, the history of fairy tales is not very clear. The oldest written fairy tales we know are from ancient Egypt, around 1300 BC. There are sometimes fairy tales in written literature in different cultures, such as The Golden Ass, which includes Cupid and Psyche (Roman, 100–200 AD). They show that fairy tales were told from very long ago.

Images for kids

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  Albert Edelfelt's illustration of Adalmina's Pearl, a Finnish fairy tale by Zachris Topelius.

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  A picture by Gustave Doré of Mother Goose reading written (literary) fairy tales

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  Ivan Bilibin's illustration of the Russian fairy tale about Vasilisa the Beautiful

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  The Violet Fairy Book (1906)

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  Cutlery for children. Detail showing fairy-tale scenes: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel.

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  John Bauer's illustration of trolls and a princess from a collection of Swedish fairy tales

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  Kings' Fairy Tale, 1909, by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis

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  Beauty and the Beast, illustration by Warwick Goble

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  Father Frost acts as a donor in the Russian fairy tale Father Frost, testing the heroine before bestowing riches upon her

See also

In Spanish: Cuento de hadas para niños