A treasury of children's classics!
Once upon a time, there was a book that contained every classic fairy tale from your childhood. The book was big, it was beautiful, and it brought joy to everyone who opened its pages... The name of that book? Why, it was Mary Engelbreit's Nursery Tales of course!
The Gist:
Mary Engelbreit writes and illustrates twelve classic fairy tales for children. These stories will ignite the imagination of young and old readers alike, whisking them away to a land of magic. The book includes Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Hansel and Gretel, Puss in Boots, the Ugly Duckling and more! The timeless stories in this collection teach children of the importance of bravery, generosity and friendship. They also warn of foolishness, greed and recklessness.
This book is very suitable for our younger elementary school friends! As the introduction by Leonard S. Marcus notes, this book is not scary at all. Engelbreit creates a world where kindness and comfort rule. Take the story of Little Red Riding Hood for example. Many versions end with a woodcutter coming to the rescue and killing the wolf, but this version avoids any such violence. Instead, the woodcutter gives the wolf "a big scolding." The wolf then lets Little Red Riding Hood and Granny set out of him, unharmed, and he runs away, embarrassed.
My favorite part:
The text to illustration ratio! I looked at several different fairy tale volumes at my local library and was dismayed by the lack of illustrations in most of them. Most of the books had text that took up a full page! Illustrations are important for K-2 readers, even for read-alouds, which is why this book drew my attention.
The text in this book is broken into smaller chunks and each story has several pages of illustrations. In fact, many of the pages have multiple illustrations on them! This makes it perfect for our earlier elementary schoolers.
What you can do:
There are SO MANY fun activities that can be incorporated into a unit on fairy tales! A quick Google search will give you a million ideas! For example, there's this Little Red Riding Hood "letter hop", where students take turns following Little Red Riding Hood's path. As they hop over each letter in her path, they must say the letter name! (Feeling too lazy to search and compile a lesson yourself?... here's an entire unit for first graders.)
You can also have students write their own fairy tale! First, be sure to work with students to create a list about essential elements of fairy tales. Perhaps also talk about themes and morals. Then, brainstorm some common words in fairy tales and write them up, so students can use them as a resource for spelling.
Fairy tales can also be a great way to talk about perspective. There are lots of fairy tales that are retold from non-traditional points of view. Author Nancy Loewen has several books that tell fairy tales from other characters' perspectives, like Believe Me, Goldilocks Rocks!: the Story of the Three Bears as told by Baby Bear or Honestly, Red Riding Hood Was Rotten: the Story of Little Red Riding Hood as told by the Wolf.
