Folktales around the world

A folktale is primarly made of a story that tells a story, lesson or cultural events. A folktale is usually passed down from generation to generation, while being edited though out the years.

African Folk Tales

Way of Communicating
There is a rich, fertile legacy of folklore from Africa. On this vast continent, folk tales and myths serve as a means of handing down traditions and customs from one generation to the next. The storytelling tradition has thrived for generations because of the absence of printed material. Folk tales prepare young people for life, as there are many lessons to be learned from the tales. Because of the history of this large continent, which includes the forceful transplanting of the people into slavery on other continents, many of the same folk tales exist in North America, South America, and the West Indies. These are told with little variation, for the tales were spread by word of mouth and were kept among the African population.
In addition to the folk tales, there are myths, legends, many proverbs, tongue twisters, and riddles.

Use of Nature
In the African folk tales, the stories reflect the culture where animals abound; consequently, the monkey, elephant, giraffe, lion, zebra, crocodile, and rhinoceros appear frequently along with a wide variety of birds such as the ostrich, the secretary bird, and the eagle. The animals and birds take on human characteristics of greed, jealousy, honesty, loneliness, etc. Through their behavior, many valuable lessons are learned. Also, the surroundings in which the tales take place reveal the vastness of the land and educate the reader about the climate, such as the dry season when it hasn't rained for several years, or the rainy season when the hills are slick with mud. The acacia trees swaying in a gentle breeze, muddy streams that are home to fish, hippos and crocodiles, moss covered rocks, and giant ant hills that serve as a "back scratcher" for huge elephants, give the reader a sense of the variety of life in this parched or lush land in this part of the world.

Latin American Folktales

In Latin American folktales, children of Latin decent will be introduced to characters who reflect their own diverse culture. All children need strong role models to give them a broader perspective and validate their experiences .
Latin American literature has a long and rich tradition that reaches back to the Colonial period and is filled with remarkable writers too little known in the English-speaking world. The short story has been a central part of this tradition, from Fray Bartolome de las Casas' narrative protests against the Spanish Conquistadors' abuses of Indians, to the world renowned Ficciones of Jorge Luis Borges, to the contemporary works of such masters as Carlos Fuentes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rosario Ferre, and others. 

Asian tales

The Asian tales allow children to experience the culture and heritage or tradition.

 These kind of tales are told in their local dialects (Japanese folktales for example) which may be difficult to understand because of intonation and pronunciations differences, conjugations and vocabulary.
The animals or creatures are known by their abilities, foxes are mentioned frequently for instance. Another characteristic that these tales contain is marriages between humans and non-humans

  To read stories for children, folktales, fairy tales and fables from around the world click HERE

 

Myth, Legend, Fable ,Folk Tale and Fairy Tales

 Myth:
A traditional, typically ancient story dealing with supernatural beings, ancestors, or heroes that serves as a fundamental type in the worldview of a people, as by explaining aspects of the natural world or delineating the psychology, customs, or ideals of society

Legend

A legend  is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude. Legend, for its active and passive participants includes no happenings that are outside the realm of "possibility", defined by a highly flexible set of parameters, which may include miracles that are perceived as actually having happened, within the specific tradition of indoctrination where the legend arises, and within which it may be transformed over time, in order to keep it fresh and vital, and realistic. A majority of legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being entirely believed by the participants, but also never being resolutely doubted

Fable

Fable is a literary genre. A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities such as verbal communication), and that illustrates or leads to an interpretation of a moral lesson (a "moral"), which may at the end be added explicitly in a pithy maxim.
A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind

 

 Folktale

It consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales, stories, tall tales, and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called folkloristics. The word "folklore" was first used by the English antiquarian William Thoms in a letter published in the London journal The Athenaeum in 1846. In usage, there is a continuum between folklore and mythology. Stith Thompson made a major attempt to index the motifs of both folklore and mythology, providing an outline into which new motifs can be placed, and scholars can keep track of all older motifs.

 Fairy Tale
A fairy tale  is a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants, mermaids, or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies. The stories may nonetheless be distinguished from other folk narratives such as legends (which generally involve belief in the veracity of the events described) and explicitly moral tales, including beast fables.
In less technical contexts, the term is also used to describe something blessed with unusual happiness, as in "fairy tale ending" (a happy ending) or "fairy tale romance" (though not all fairy tales end happily). Colloquially, a "fairy tale" or "fairy story" can also mean any farfetched story or tall tale; it's used especially of any story that not only isn't true, but couldn't possibly be true.

Analysis of literature for children

People who contributed to the analysis of literature for children
Vladimir Propp	Bruno Bettelheim	Maria Tatar	Kieran Egan
Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet formalist scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. Vladimir Propp was born on April 17, 1895 in St. Petersburg to a German family. He attended St. Petersburg University (1913–1918) majoring in Russian and German philology. His Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. Although it represented a breakthrough in both folkloristic and morphology and influenced Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, it was generally unnoticed in the West until it was translated in 1958. His character types are used in media education and can be applied to almost any story be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, games, etc.	Bruno Bettelheim (August 28, 1903 – March 13, 1990) was an Austrian-born American child psychologist and writer. He gained an international reputation for his work on Freud, psychoanalysis, and emotionally disturbed children. Bettelheim analyzed fairy tales in terms of Freudian psychology in The Uses of Enchantment (1976). He discussed the emotional and symbolic importance of fairy tales for children, including traditional tales at one time considered too dark, such as those collected and published by the Brothers Grimm. Bettelheim suggested that traditional fairy tales, with the darkness of abandonment, death, witches, and injuries, allowed children to grapple with their fears in remote, symbolic terms. If they could read and interpret these fairy tales in their own way, he believed, they would get a greater sense of meaning and purpose. Bettelheim thought that by engaging with these socially-evolved stories, children would go through emotional growth that would better prepare them for their own futures. In the U.S., Bettelheim won two major awards for The Uses of Enchantment: the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and the National Book Award in category Contemporary Thought	Maria Tatar is an American academic whose expertise lies in children's literature, German literature, and folklore. Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and Chair of the Committee on Degrees in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. Tatar earned an undergraduate degree from Denison University and a doctoral degree from Princeton University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts Perhaps Tatar's most original contribution to thought about children's stories and what they do to their inhabitants is about how the addicted readers are also learning (most of them) to deal with growing up. The great powers of the mind in the world of children's books are a capacity for wonder, and an insatiable curiosity. The writers feed both with colours never seen on sea or land, with moons and stars and gold and silver and monsters and dangers. But they are also teaching mastery of language which is the stuff of thought and necessary to growing up when the time comes.	Egan was born in 1942 in Clonmel Ireland, though, he was raised and educated in England. He graduated from the University of London with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1966. He subsequently worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Comparative Studies in Kingston upon Thames. He then moved to the United States and began a Ph.D in the philosophy of education at the Stanford University School of Education. Egan completed his Ph.D at Cornell University in 1972. Kieran Egan is the director of the Imaginative Education Research Group, which was founded by the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. The goal of this group is to improve education on a global scale by developing and proliferating the ideas of Imaginative Education. Kieran Egan has provided educational theorists and educators with something that few others have in the history of educational theorizing – a theory of educational development.  He has located this theory and the need for its vision against a compelling backdrop of conflicting educational visions.  Regardless of the accuracy of Egan’s critique of educational policy conflict, his theory serves simultaneously as both a descriptive and prescriptive account of the development of the “educated” mind. His model attempts to harmonize naturalistic, social, and humanistic conceptions of education by linking a sequence of educational activities that reflect the development of social knowledge to the “natural” knowledge-seeking tendencies of children – tendencies that change with age and maturation.

What is "literature for children"?

What is "literature for children"?

Children's literature  consists of the books, stories, and poems which are enjoyed by or targeted primarily at children. Modern children's literature is classified in different ways, including by genre or the intended age of the reader.
Children's literature has its roots in the stories and songs that adults told their children before publishing existed, as part of the wider oral tradition. Because of this it can be difficult to track the development of early stories. Even since widespread printing, many classic tales were originally created for adults and have been adapted for a younger audience. Although originally children's literature was often a re-writing of other forms, since the 1400s there has been much literature aimed specifically at children, often with a moral or religious message. To some extent the nature of children's fiction, and the divide between older children's and adult fiction became blurred as time went by and tales appealing to both adult and child had substantial commercial success.

Some important names are:

Charles Perrault
Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was a French author and member of the Académie française. He laid the foundations for a new literary genre, the fairy tale, with his works derived from pre-existing folk tales
In 1697 in Paris, Charles Perrault published several tales from the oral tradition, albeit with his own embellishments, in his Histoires ou Contes du temps passé (also known as Mother Goose Tales). The tales enjoyed instant success. Some of the tales included are Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, and Puss in Boots. He ultimately recorded eleven fairy tales, most of which are among the most popular tales today


 
 Grimm Brothers
 
The Brothers Grimm, Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859), were born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, in the German state of Hesse.
Throughout their lives they remained close friends, and both studied law at Marburg University. Jacob was a pioneer in the study of German philology, and although Wilhelm's work was hampered by poor health the brothers collaborated in the creation of a German dictionary, not completed until a century after their deaths.
But they were best (and universally) known for the collection of over two hundred folk tales they made from oral sources and published in two volumes of Nursery and Household Tales in 1812 and 1814.
Although their intention was to preserve such material as part of German cultural and literary history, and their collection was first published with scholarly notes and no illustration, the tales soon came into the possession of young readers. This was in part due to Edgar Taylor, who made the first English translation in 1823, selecting about fifty stories "with the amusement of some young friends principally in view." They have been an essential ingredient of children's reading ever since.

Hans Christian Andersen 

Hans Christian Andersen ( April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet noted for his children's stories. These include "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," "The Snow Queen," "The Little Mermaid," "Thumbelina," "The Little Match Girl," and "The Ugly Duckling."
During his lifetime he was acclaimed for having delighted children worldwide, and was feted by royalty. His poetry and stories have been translated into more than 150 languages. They have inspired motion pictures, plays, ballets, and animated films

Career

In 1829, Andersen enjoyed considerable success with a short  story titled "A Journey on Foot from Holmen's Canal to the East Point of Amager". He also published a comedy and a collection of poems that season. Though he made little progress writing and publishing immediately thereafter, in 1833 he received a small traveling grant from the King, enabling him to set out on the first of many journeys through Europe. At Jura, near Le Locle, Switzerland, he wrote the story, "Agnete and the Merman". He spent an evening in the Italian seaside village of Sestri Levante the same year, inspiring the name, The Bay of Fables. (An annual festival celebrates his visit.) In October, 1834, he arrived in Rome. Andersen's first novel, "The Improvisatore", was published at the beginning of 1835, becoming an instant success. During these traveling years, Hans Christian Andersen lived in an apartment at number 20, Nyhavn, Copenhagen.

Fairy tales

It was during 1835 that Andersen published the first installment of his immortal Fairy Tales (Danish: '´'Eventyr). More stories, completing the first volume, were published in 1836 and 1837. The quality of these stories was not immediately recognized, and they sold poorly. At the same time, Andersen enjoyed more success with two novels O.T. (1836) and Only a Fiddler.



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Analyzing an Ad

We can see in this video that one technique the advertisement is using is Testimonial: a famous person, in this case Juan Sebastian Veron,  who claims the product is good.
The product is a yogurt, so the demographic targets are people of all ages. That`s why the character is with his father, an old person, and with his son, a child.
Another technique is Image Advertising. The place where the Ad takes place is a football field and the people are training.Therefore,the product is being associated with athetlic people and sport activities.
Finally, when Veron says "Con Yogurisimo , hay Brujita para rato" the Ad is encouraging people to consume the product to extend their physical states.

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