Folklore and Fairy Tales

The Phoenix Dance

A journey through madness and mania On the island of Faranor in the kingdom of Windward, twelve princesses dance their shoes to shreds each night. No one knows why. Not the king or queen. Not the knights, lords, or ladies-in-waiting. When the queen blames the royal shoemaker, his apprentice, Phoenix Dance, puts her life at risk to solve the mystery. She braves magic spells, dragons, evil wizards, and the treachery of the princesses themselves. As Phoenix faces these dangers, she finds herself caught in the dangerous dance inside herself – a dance of darkness and light, a dance that presents her with the greatest challenge of her life. This captivating companion to Aria of the Seaweaves a retelling of Grimm’s fairy tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses with the story of a young woman’s inward journey toward an understanding of a scary, unpredictable part of her own nature.

Tomfoolery: Trickery And Foolery With Words

Alvin Schwartz and Glen Rounds team up once again to preserve the heritage of American folklore in this hilarious compilation of word tricks and verbal hocus-pocus. The compilation of funny folklore has lots of riddles with ridiculous answers, very tall talk and an endless array of tales.

Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett

Sally Ann, wife of Davy Crockett, fears nothing–and proves it when braggart Mike Fink tries to scare her. On the day she is born this amazing baby proudly announces she can out-talk, out-grin, out-scream, out-swim, and out-run any baby in Kentucky. Within a few years Sally is off to the frontier, where she stuns a hungry grizzly bear, makes a lasso out of six rattlesnakes, and is more than a match for the mighty Mike Fink. And when Sally Ann rescues Davy Crockett from a pair of ferocious eagles, even her hornet’s-nest bonnet and skunk perfume don’t stop him from proposing marriage. You won’t find Sally Ann in any history book, but that hasn’t kept her from becoming an authentic American frontier legend and the unforgettable heroine of Steven Kellogg’s most delightfully rip-roaring tall tale.

Tailypo: A Newfangled Tall Tale

On a farm in the Texas Hill Country, a young boy confronts a strange critter that tries to steal his family’s last meal. A variation on the folktale about a monster that leaves its tail behind in the cabin of an African American boy.

Pecos Bill

Incidents from the life of Pecos Bill, from his childhood among the coyotes to his unusual wedding day.

When Birds Could Talk And Bats Could Sing

Based on African-American folktales told in the South during the plantation era, a collection of stories originally gathered by journalist Martha Young pays tribute to the human spirit in the face of terrible hardship.