Neal Gaimen wrote the following statement about hope: "What makes children's fiction children's fiction? What makes fiction for adults? What do people respond to and what do I respond to. One of the keys to children's fiction for me is you owe it to the world, and you owe it to the kids, to give them hope." Continue reading

Illustration by Kjell Midthun. Stories of Wonder After the soldiers leave, there is more food, more working together, and more occasions for stories to tell. This has been true for centuries, since before the Greek tales of the Odyssey, the... Continue reading

Charles Dickens never forgot his painful years as a poor boy working for many years under very harsh conditions. His imaginative fantasy, A Christmas Carol, was a wonderful story, and created great change among people. Continue reading

I have gone on to read several more Russian tales from the past. They are all new to me and are quite different, especially in structure, from Western European tales as exemplified by the Brothers Grimm. I have found them to be filled with magic and incredible, episodic stories. They are involved with nature, mystical events, surprises and danger. Continue reading

A World of Magic Opens Before Us . . ."Wilhelm Grimm, wrote that fairy tales were the 'last echoes of pagan myths. . . A world of magic is up before us, one which still exists among us in secret forests, in underground caves, and in the deepest sea, and it is still visible to children. (Fairy tales) belong to our national poetic heritage..." Continue reading

Mark Twain's writings embodied the still evolving, complex life of the USA in the 19th century. From river journeys to jumping frogs, his 28 books, stories, and articles were written for adults and read by multitudes of all ages. L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of OZ was an original fantasy; it was also a reflection of life in nineteenth century America, Continue reading

"Fairy tales report from imaginary territory ...a magical elsewhere of possibility; a hero or heroine, or sometimes both together are faced with ordeals, terrors, and disaster in a world that, while it bears some resemblance to the ordinary conditions of human existence, mostly diverges from it in the way it works, taking the protagonists -- and us, the story's readers or listeners -- to another place where wonders are commonplace and desires fulfilled". -- Marina Warner -- Once Upon A Time, A Short History of Fairy Tales Continue reading

Asbjörnsen and Moe developed a friendship while still attending school and together they determined to do for Norwegian folklore what the Brothers Grimm had accomplished for German folklore...(they) sought to preserve a national treasure, one that both reflected and shaped a national identity...preserving the most profound expressions of the Norwegian soul...Asbjörnsen and Moe preserved a robust folkloric tradition and did for Norway what the Sagas did for Iceland and the Kalevala did for Finland." -- Maria Tatar, The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales. Continue reading

No frontier can keep a good story from roaming. It will travel, and travel far, and travel back again in a different guise, a changed mood, and, above all, a new meaning." -- Marina Warner Continue reading

The Irish literary revival was born and gained momentum in the nineteenth century -- an era of famine, starvation and exodus...Irish writers and scholars began collecting and publishing fairy stories and myths. Their intentions were quite similar to the Grimm's.... Continue reading

Puss in Boots -- a story where a cat succeeds in changing his life, and the life of his master, from no hope and despair into a new life where he overcomes the poverty and uncertainty of their lives in a splendid way. It had a timeless appeal and ordinary people told versions of this tale for centuries . . . Continue reading

Long ago, when folk tales were told by people in homes, in fields, in the marketplace and taverns, there were many stories of the forests.The forests were a threshold of wonder. In tales of wonder, the forest never ends. Continue reading

For centuries, imagination and oral tales, spoken or sung, explained the mysteries of life with stories. Tales were told of those with uncanny powers, saints who had the power of rekindling life, shamans and healers who called on the beyond. Continue reading

As a princess, a woman had great power, as well as all the material things that common people, who told and retold the stories, usually lacked in their own lives. But a princess cursed by dark powers into a sleep where time stood still was vulnerable and without power. Continue reading

Memories of hope in children's Christmas literature from Beatrix Potter to the Wind in the Willows. . . Continue reading