Here are 100 books that World Tales for Family Storytelling fans have personally recommended if you like
World Tales for Family Storytelling.
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I'm a storyteller and folktale collector. All my jobs have involved telling stories – as a community librarian, in theatre, in education, and since 2006 as a professional storyteller and writer. I work in schools, festivals, and outdoor education with all sorts of people and their animals. I have honed my skills to find the most enjoyable traditional tales that can be shared widely. I live in Scotland, where I encourage families to read and tell their favourite stories together. Storytelling is a living art form that belongs to everyone. More than anything, I love the natural world, and I bring the magnificence of nature into all my work.
This book is packed with Taffy Thomas's best riddle tales.
Taffy has been storytelling for many years and is brilliant at it. He knows just how to keep a story short and exciting. Each tale has at least one and often more riddles to be solved by the reader or listener. The expertly drawn pictures are humorous and help you solve the riddles.
It's also great for storytellers, parents, and teachers who want to keep their audience actively engaged. I tell these riddle tales when I want my listeners to join in and be part of the fun. Taffy tells us where and who he learned the riddles from – an enjoyable insight into his extraordinary life as a teller of tales.
We have been fascinated by riddles for as long as we have had language - think of the legend of the sphinx in Greek mythology. This wonderful book includes both magical riddle tales and simple challenges, with clues and answers hidden in intricate illustrations. Discover how the farmer saved his daughter by solving the fairies' riddles or how the old hen-wife helped the two brothers solve the mystery of their father's will. Have a read - you'll be hooked.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I'm a storyteller and folktale collector. All my jobs have involved telling stories – as a community librarian, in theatre, in education, and since 2006 as a professional storyteller and writer. I work in schools, festivals, and outdoor education with all sorts of people and their animals. I have honed my skills to find the most enjoyable traditional tales that can be shared widely. I live in Scotland, where I encourage families to read and tell their favourite stories together. Storytelling is a living art form that belongs to everyone. More than anything, I love the natural world, and I bring the magnificence of nature into all my work.
This is a one-story picture book from another great storyteller, Eric Maddern, with fantastic illustrations by Paul Hess.
I love this clever, funny folktale and have often told it to festival and school audiences. The text is elegant and easy to read for ages 7 plus, but younger children will enjoy having it read to them. The humour in the tale is brilliantly portrayed in Paul Hess's colourful, amusing pictures. Look out for the three blind mice.
As with most folk stories, the meaning or moral of the tale is shown through clever wit and riddle-like logic. This story has a particularly surprising and satisfying end.
Old King Karnak is worried. He hasn't long to live, and there is no heir to the throne. So he holds a rather unusual competition to find one. Knights and nobles flock to the palace and the King gives each of them a tiny seed to grow. Jack the farmer's son is given a seed too, so he plants it, waters it and waits for it to sprout...
Praise for Nail Soup
"Space should still be found for this beautifully retold folk tale. Paul Hess's illustrations make ordinary household objects seem magically unreal all at the same time." - Carousel
I'm a storyteller and folktale collector. All my jobs have involved telling stories – as a community librarian, in theatre, in education, and since 2006 as a professional storyteller and writer. I work in schools, festivals, and outdoor education with all sorts of people and their animals. I have honed my skills to find the most enjoyable traditional tales that can be shared widely. I live in Scotland, where I encourage families to read and tell their favourite stories together. Storytelling is a living art form that belongs to everyone. More than anything, I love the natural world, and I bring the magnificence of nature into all my work.
This is a timeless volume of classic Scottish folktales. Judy Paterson has wisely chosen a diverse and enthralling selection of folk stories from Scotland.
Her writing style is superb for children aged 7 plus. She blends her literary skills with an intimate knowledge of Children's literacy needs. They are sensitively chosen stories, nothing overtly scary, but some are supernatural enough for bed covers to be pulled up if needed.
Children will adore the beautiful pictures and the carefully crafted attention to detail within each tale. I particularly loved her tender descriptions of horses. I recommend this book to anyone (children and adults) who want to enjoy Scottish folklore and folktales.
Read this book, and you will be initiated into the Celtic world of myths, giants, kelpies, fairies, and supernatural creatures.
A giant sea monster ... trees that can dance ... a water-horse ... a girl so clever she outwits a giant ... Welcome to the world of the Scottish folk tale - a world of talking animals, mischief-making witches, giants, trolls, bold girls, reckless boys and, of course, the Wee Folk. These stories - specially chosen to be enjoyed by 7 to 11-year-old readers - burst with adventure and glitter with magic. As old as the mountains and the glens, these well- loved tales are retold by storyteller Judy Paterson.
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
I'm a storyteller and folktale collector. All my jobs have involved telling stories – as a community librarian, in theatre, in education, and since 2006 as a professional storyteller and writer. I work in schools, festivals, and outdoor education with all sorts of people and their animals. I have honed my skills to find the most enjoyable traditional tales that can be shared widely. I live in Scotland, where I encourage families to read and tell their favourite stories together. Storytelling is a living art form that belongs to everyone. More than anything, I love the natural world, and I bring the magnificence of nature into all my work.
This magical picture book presents seven of the best folk stories from around the world.
Retold by Hugh Lupton, a veteran of storytelling and an inspirational writer. Some stories are deliriously funny, and others contain golden nuggets of universal truth. I've repeatedly told these stories, and they enthrall and delight audiences. They come with a CD of Hugh telling the tales orally, which is fantastic for non-readers, busy families, and people learning English.
Niamh Sharkey's beautiful bold pictures take this book of tales to another level of enjoyment. It's a visual and rhythmical feast of storytelling that can be shared with ages six up to seniors. If I had to choose one favourite book of stories for oral telling, then this is it.
Beautifully captured by Niamh Sharkey's quirky and perceptive illustrations, these tales have all the color and vigor of the countries and cultures they represent. At the same time, they each remind readers how vast and mysterious the world is, and how lives can be transformed by the most unexpected circumstances. Full-color illustrations.
It’s natural for humans to wonder who or what might have power over our actions. We’ve clawed our way to the top of the food chain, channeled the power of the elements, and tamed much of nature to our whim. What if something out there was the architect—or more—of our successes and failures? It’s something I’ve explored since I first began writing: fed by the adventures of living as an “Army brat” with a new life every two years, in keeping with my natural inclination to solve puzzles, and spurred by my fear of death and the equally frightening possibility that someone is or isn’t pulling the strings…
The main reason I’m recommending this book is “The Little Mermaid” (the original version, not a sanitized later edition or off-the-mark Disney interpretation). I loved fairy tales as a kid and “The Little Mermaid” is my favorite because it doesn’t have a happy ending. (Not for the mermaid, at least.) I loved that just because we think things should happen a certain way doesn’t mean they will. The mermaid thought she was fated to be with the prince. But all her planning and sacrifice and suffering didn’t change the possibility that the prince was fated to be with the woman he chose. It was an early and valuable lesson for me on seeing things from a different perspective, and inspiration for one of my own short stories.
A new collection of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales. There are 12 stories which include old favourites such as "The Ugly Duckling", "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Snow Queen", as well as some less well known tales such as "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep" and "The Shadow".
Reading with your kid can be a delight, but it’s tough to find a book that both grown-up and child think is hysterical. I mean, I tried reading Catch-22 to my three-year-old, but for some reason the incisive social commentary just didn’t resonate with her. My kids and I both let out genuine chuckles and guffaws while reading all of these books—an experience that I treasured. These books are all giggly, snickery proof that you don’t have to dumb things down to appeal to a wide age range—a goal that I aim for myself in the children’s books and TV shows that I write.
This is the book that made my kids’ heads explode (not literally—this book is perfectly safe (as far as I know)) as it helped them discover the idea of parody: taking something familiar and twisting it in a funny, unexpected way.
We rolled and lol’ed together as we read Jon’s wild, hysterical takes on old fairy tales. The non-twist twist ending to his take on the ugly duckling story is still a running joke in our family. Jon’s The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs and The Real Dada Mother Goose are also great for the same reason.
The entire book, with its unconventional page arrangement and eclectic, frenetic mix of text and pictures, is a spoof on the art of book design and the art of the fairy tale. The individual tales, such as The Really Ugly Duckling and Little Red Running Shorts, can be extracted for telling aloud, with great success. Another masterpiece from the team that created The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! -Horn Book
GK Chesterton reportedly said that "fairytales are more than true: not because they teach us that dragons are real, but because they teach us dragons can be beaten." This rings true to me; I've been fascinated by the darker side of fairytales since childhood, when I used them to escape and make sense of my own dark experiences. Stories that began as oral traditions are my favourite, a blend of entertainment for long nights around a fire, and cautionary tales that teach us to fear the wolf, and beware of that which seems too good to be true. Old stories teach us what it means to be human. I hope you enjoy these.
The Fourth Bear is possibly too light to be included in a list of dark fairytales, but the main character is a classic, almost noir type detective, so maybe it's ok. Nursery Crime Division, to be exact. I think Jasper Fforde may be to blame for my desire to write Jack and the Beanstalk as a dark gritty courtroom drama (maybe one day!), he blends genres together so seamlessly, and I long to be able to do it as well as he does. There's a terrifying serial killer on the loose, and I was as on the edge of my seat as I am with any thriller, even though I knew that killer was The Gingerbread Man. It follows the plot of a standard police procedural/thriller, while including Punch and Judy, Goldilocks, an illegal porridge ring, and a murderous biscuit....or is The Gingerbread Man a cake? I absolutely adore the…
Return to the world of the Nursery Crime Division in this novel from Jasper Fforde, the New York Times bestselling author of the Thursday Next series and The Constant Rabbit
The inimitable Jasper Fforde gives readers another delightful mash-up of detective fiction and nursery rhyme, returning to those mean streets where no character is innocent. The Gingerbreadman-sadist, psychopath, cookie-is on the loose in Reading, but that's not who Detective Jack Spratt and Sergeant Mary Mary are after. Instead, they've been demoted to searching for missing journalist "Goldy" Hatchett. The last witnesses to see her alive were the reclusive Three Bears,…
Wolves are magickal to me. Their spirituality, their raw wild power, so fierce and brave, and yet there’s a gentleness present. I find them inspiring. Reading the wolf classics like Call of the Wild and White Fang gave me a foundation. Recently, I toured a wolf conservation in New York State and fell in love with a white wolf there. She pranced like a princess and had the eyes of an angel. Afterward, I became passionate about wolves and their mystery. Reading and writing about wolves sparked me into exploring them at a deeper level. I have a wandering notion that I was a wolf in a past life.
Absolutely thought-provoking. Lots of shudders. Real chills. Famous fairy tales like Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, and Goldilocks are wild, dark, and grim. I was haunted long after I closed the book. If it’s true that fairy tales are embedded in our subconscious minds, these stories pretty much ripped the darkness up so that I was cringing.
Some of it went a bit far into madness and disturbing, but the reach struck me as highly inventive. Macabre, yes indeedy. I actually don’t read this level of horror, but the experience of these extreme fairy tales was a new adventure. Blazing. This is a one-of-a-kind adult fairy tale book, for sure.
"..these stories kept me nose-deep into the book from beginning to end.”
Hold a mirror to a shadow and you will see the world of dark and twisted fairy tales, written for adults to re-imagine familiar characters in a sinister light. For generations these tales have magnetized a moral compass for children across the earth. The time has come to reset the poles.
Thrown into a world of adult madness, the fairy tales must mature to defend themselves from a relentless censorship. Restrictions to their expression…
Bad boys in young adult romance have always been one of my favorite tropes to read. For seven years, I facilitated a poetry workshop with teens in a juvenile detention center and got to hear their stories—the heartbreak, the challenges, and the triumphs under all that bad boy façade. My memoir, Kids in Orange: Voices from Juvenile Detention, is about the workshops and helped me understand both myself as a writer and the “bad boys” who wrote poetry each week. There are a lot of complexities to bad boy characters and the most satisfying stories are the ones where the bad boys redeem themselves and find love.
It’s always a joy to find a good short story collection, better yet when the stories are all giving the villains from fairy tales a chance to tell their side of the story. From Jack in the Beanstalk to The Little Mermaid, this collection is a great one to dive into and find out what makes our famous villains tick.
Leave it to the heroes to save the world--villains just want to rule the world.
In this unique YA anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view.
These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like "Medusa," Sherlock Holmes, and "Jack and the Beanstalk" provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage--and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!
Featuring writing from . . .
Authors: Renee Ahdieh, Ameriie, Soman Chainani, Susan…
I’ve been writing fantasy since I was a very young child. My need to escape a world that I viewed with fear was satiated by writing worlds that gave me control over how I could create and master them. I would read books that I adored but wanted to implement changes to better fit my own personal feelings and perception. For example, unicorns were terrifying creatures in my head, so I gave them fire-covered horns and eyes of flames. Nothing in the world felt pure or safe to me, so I write in a way that gives a dark twist to any and all mythological creatures and magical realms.
Be careful what you say out loud. You never know who might hear you.
In this story, you have a cruel and harsh Staryk lord with only care for his silver to be turned to gold. He’s cold and indifferent to the one he appoints to this seemingly impossible task, yet you find yourself clinging to hope he will change.
There are multiple POV, so if this is your thing, trust me you’ll love how many are in here. It’s like getting multiple thrilling stories in one book. Redeemable monsters is how I would label this book in two words if I had to.
Following her award-winning novel Uprooted, Naomi Novik has once again been influenced by classic folktales. Taking Rumpelstiltskin as her starting point, Spinning Silver is rich, original and a joy to read.
Will dark magic claim their home? Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father's too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge - and if she fails,…
