Aimed at instructors of undergraduate classes, this book provides comprehensive guidance on using fairy tales to engage students and further critical inquiry and learning. The introductory section, "Foundations of Fairy-Tale Studies," provides historical and cultural context for fairy tales and introduces key issues in fairy tale studies by such notable figures as Donald Haase, Maria Tatar, and Jack Zipes. The second section of the book, "Teaching and Learning with Fairy Tales," comprises essays describing and addressing the teaching of fairy tales. Many include sample handouts and assignments, and an entire chapter consists of sample syllabi, all of which serve as useful and practical examples for instructors who want to incorporate fairy tales into their classrooms. The contributors hail from a variety of disciplines, including English, French, German, and Italian literature, as well as classical studies, economics, and education, each one representing different approaches to fairy tales and to teaching. While the book focuses on college and university instructors, the variety of contexts and methods would be of interest to any undergraduate or graduate student interested in fairy tale studies.
~E. A. Nicol
If you are looking for a comprehensive, practical guide to teaching fairy tales, this book provides valuable instruction. If you are interested in learning more about fairy tales, the didactic methodology in each chapter will improve your understanding of the genre. This volume, drawing on the expertise of fellow teachers, challenges and expands the notion of what it means when one is teaching fairy tales.
~Mary L. Sellers
Teaching Fairy Tales will assist teachers at many educational levels in guiding students to defamiliarize popular tales, conduct critical readings, enjoy creative intellectual projects, and contextualize fairy tales in their sociohistorical, ideological, and cognitive conflicts and contributions to society. But don’t take my word for it. Put it to use and enjoy it for yourself.
~Jill Rudy
Canepa’s collection acknowledges that fairy tale studies is a broad and multidisciplinary field. Each essay is detailed and contributes meaningful ideas and activities to implement into the classroom. Ultimately, Teaching Fairy Tales succeeds in its aim to bring together the expertise of many individuals and invite students (and teachers) to think critically about and read both new and familiar tales.
~Jamie Bienhoff
The essays on classroom teaching strategies are enlightening to read because they address many of the questions, challenges, and issues that teachers commonly encounter, such as the apparent overfamiliarity with fairy tales that sometimes make students disinclined to read the tales critically or think about them in new contexts. The misconception of Disney’s animated films as ‘original’ versions is another issue that is often brought up, along with the strong sense of childhood memories associated with fairy tales. The emotive response to fairy tales can at times take student readers by surprise, and as many of the contributors explain, it is important to create the classroom as a safe, comfortable zone in which students can share their reactions in a supportive setting. The fairy-tale world’s harsh realities of child abuse, abandonment, homelessness, and conflict resolution through violence are factors in contemporary lives as well. So although the book’s overall emphasis is on literary analysis, the essays in Teaching Fairy Tales examine these and many other salient, relevant themes with exemplary insight and inspiring scholarship.
~Kirsten Møllegaard
Teaching Fairy Tales is an extremely useful and much needed volume in the burgeoning field of fairy tale studies, full of good ideas and useful, practical examples, clearly presented from a variety of approaches and organized to make it easy for instructors to find useful materials. Anyone who teaches fairy tales from any disciplinary perspective will find this volume valuable. This reviewer will definitely make use of it in the classroom.
~Timothy H. Evans
Teaching Fairy Tales is an inspiring volume and a testimony to Nancy Canepa’s vision and scholarship. She brings together the voices of both world-leading and new scholars, thereby providing a wealth of material on the teaching of fairy tales that is original, creative and multidisciplinary. This volume is a major contribution to the field and a demonstration of the tremendous pedagogical significance of fairy-tale studies both within and beyond the context of the humanities.
~Lorenza Gianfrancesco
Teaching Fairy Tales is an outstanding collection. In addition to solid scholarship, the detailed descriptions of activities and frank
narration about courses give the collection the feel of a lively conversation among colleagues. Both new and experienced undergraduate instructors will enjoy the straightforward language and the common structure among most essays that clearly outlines course descriptions, objectives, and activities. This collection would make an excellent addition to the shelf of any instructor who wants to teach fairy tales for the first time, or who simply wants to continue refining their current pedagogical strategies.
~Jessica Stanley Neterer
Not the first, but certainly one of the best volumes to usher the fairytale from in front of the hearth to the classroom, offering detailed, erudite, and highly informative studies of this transitional process. Its valuable essays would function well in courses of folklore, comparative and specific literatures departments as well as in schools of education.
~Dan Ben-Amos, Editor of Folktales of the Jews
Combining theoretical and analytical depth with practical application, this book presents scholarship on teaching fairy tales mainly from American-based and American-trained academics, including established and emerging scholars. Many of the contributions are grounded in familiar material (Disney, the Grimms, Perrault), so the work is accessible for students and faculty not trained in fairy-tale studies, but there are enough unexpected stories and examples to keep specialists interested.
~Pauline Greenhill, Co-Editor with Jill Terry Rudy of Channeling Wonder: Fairy Tales on Television (Wayne State University Press, 2014)
As the popularity of folk and fairy tale studies blossoms around the globe, this collection of essays will prove invaluable to educators and students alike. Canepa and her contributors have provided a comprehensive account of the field, rich in ideas, informed by cutting edge scholarship, and bursting with inspiring illustrations of pedagogical practice. They have also provided a timely case for the importance of socially and historically rigorous approaches to traditional narratives in the contemporary classroom, and, by extension, in the contemporary world. Without doubt, this collection will inform my own future practice as a teacher. It will also help my students better understand the value to themselves and to society of a critical appreciation of the stories of the past and our modern mediations of them.
~Andrew Teverson, Professor of English Literature, Kingston University, London
