Educators aspire to teach skills that will expand the way their students think and act, not just in the classroom but throughout their lives. Centered on fairy tales, this pedagogical resource contains educational theories and classroom techniques contributed by scholars from around the world. Each teaching technique provided uses the familiarity of fairy tales as a non-threatening base to explore complex concepts and practices while encouraging students to examine the origins and assumptions of their own society, to expand their worldviews along with their critical thinking, reading, writing, creative, and expressive skills. This collection of essays is primarily designed for use in post-secondary classes, but it is an invaluable resource for any educator. The book is organized into five parts with two to three essays in each section, each presenting detailed theories and learning goals behind the classroom activities. Practical advice for adapting lessons for various education levels, class lengths, and subjects of coursework is also included. These practices for teaching fairy tales provide a firm foundation for creating lessons that will give students and instructors a greater understanding of our world and the promise of a better future.

This volume of critical essays explores global children's literary traditions and not just how non-US-centered children's literature is taught within college courses, but how it can be used to frame undergraduate pedagogy outside of the classroom.

Scholars from many different academic areas will use this volume to explore and implement new aspects of the field of fairy-tale studies in their teaching and research.

Using children's and young adult literature is a great way to enhance a variety of college classes in fields as varied as biology, computer game development, political science and history. This collection of new essays by educators from a number of disciplines describes how to use such works as Where the Wild Things Are, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Swamp Thing, Percy Jackson, and Harry Potter to introduce complex concepts and spark interest in difficult subjects. The contributors describe innovative teaching strategies using dystopian fiction, graphic narratives, fairy tales and mythology. Often overlooked or dismissed by teachers, children's literature can support student learning by raising levels of academic rigor, creativity and critical thinking.

Fantasy literature, often derided as superficial and escapist, is one of the most popular and enduring genres of fiction worldwide. It is also—perhaps surprisingly—thought-provoking, structurally complex, and relevant to contemporary society, as the essays in this volume attest. The scholars, teachers, and authors represented here offer their perspectives on this engaging genre. Within these pages, a reader will find a wealth of ideas to help teachers use these texts in the classroom, challenging students to read fantasy with a critical eye. They employ interdisciplinary, philosophical, and religious lenses, as well as Marxist and feminist critical theory, to help students unlock texts. The books discussed include epic fantasy by such authors as Tolkien and Le Guin, children’s fantasy by Beatrix Potter and Saint-Exupéry, modern fantasy by Rowling and Martin, and even fairy tales and comic books. The contributors offer provocations, questioning the texts and pushing the boundaries of meaning within the fantasy genre. And in doing so, they challenge readers themselves to ponder these tales more deeply. But through each of these chapters runs a profound love of the genre and a respect for those who produce such beautiful and moving stories. Furthermore, as with all the books in this series, this volume is informed by the tenets of critical pedagogy, and is focused on re-envisioning fantasy literature through the lens of social justice and empowerment. Prepare to be challenged and inspired as you read these explorations of a much-loved genre.

From Pinocchio to The Chronicles of Narnia to Charlotte's Web, classic children's tales have shaped generations of young people. In recent years, homeschoolers and new classical schools have put these masterpieces of children's literature at the center of their curricula. And these stories continue to be embraced by parents, students, and educators alike. In Tending the Heart of Virtue, Vigen Guroian illuminates the power of classic tales and their impact on the moral imagination. He demonstrates how these stories teach the virtues through vivid depictions of the struggle between good and evil, while he also unveils components of the good, the true, and the beautiful in plot and character. With clarity and elegance, Guroian reads deeply into the classic stories. He demonstrates how these stories challenge and enliven the moral imaginations of children. And he shows the reader how to get "inside" of classic stories and communicate their lessons to the child. For more than two decades Tending the Heart of Virtue has been embraced by parents, guardians, and teachers for whom the stories it discusses are not only beloved classics but repositories of moral wisdom. This new revised edition includes three new chapters and an expanded annotated bibliography in which Guroian interprets such stories as Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling, the Grimms' Cinderella, and John Ruskin's The King of the Golden River.

In our distant childhood, mothers and grandmothers told us fairy tales, not suspecting, perhaps, that by doing so they used one of the most effective methods of psychological correction – fairy-tale therapy. A fairy tale is a means of introducing a child to the world of human destinies, to history; this is the «golden key» to changing the environment, its creative, constructive transformation. The child half lives in an imaginary, unreal world, and not just lives, but actively acts in it, rebuilding it and himself. It is from this treasury that he draws information about the reality that he does not yet know, the features of the future, about which he still does not know how to think [12]. Surprisingly simple, but at the same time instructive stories were breathtaking, plunging the world of dragons, woodpeckers, brownies, beautiful princesses and evil witches. Are these simple stories simple, as it seems at first glance? Is it just an entertainment tool or a universal educational program that helps children to settle in this difficult world? The process of fairy tale therapy allows the child to actualize and realize his problems, as well as to see different ways to solve them [12, p. 84]. A fairy tale metaphor, due to its inherent special properties, turns out to be a way of building mutual understanding between children, an attitude towards oneself as an individual. In fairy tales you can find a complete list of human problems and ways to solve them. Fairy stories contain information about the dynamics of life processes. Therefore, a fairy tale can give a symbolic warning about how the situation will develop, which is important in corrective work [118, p. 35]. K.I.Chukovsky believed that the purpose of a fairy tale «is to educate a child in humanity – this marvelous ability to worry about other people's misfortunes, to rejoice in the joys of another, to experience someone else's fate as one's own. After all, a fairy tale improves, enriches and humanizes the child's psyche, since a child listening to a fairy tale feels like an active participant in it and always identifies with those of its characters who fight for justice, goodness, and freedom». A fairy tale is a means of working with the inner world of a child, surprising in terms of the strength of its psychological impact, a powerful tool for development. It is the psychological content of fairy tales, the symbolic reflection of psychological phenomena that make folk tales an indispensable tool for influencing a person [12]. A school psychologist constantly asks himself two questions: «What? » and «How?». In the sense that every day, in the case of providing psychological assistance to a child, a specialist tries to figure out what is actually happening and how to help a small client overcome the difficulties that have arisen. Searching for the answer to the question «what? » are carried out with the help of various methods of psychodiagnostics, observation, conversations with parents and teachers, etc. But when the answer to the first question becomes more or less clear, the question «how? » arises with all its cast-iron simplicity and inaccessibility. At this stage, many school psychologists, unfortunately, give in, because it is necessary to move from diagnostics to full of surprises and risk, the path of psychocorrection and psychotherapy. The enrichment of practical psychology with new means of effective work with children, provided, in particular, by such a direction as fairy tale therapy, is a gratifying fact of the last decade. Now to the notorious question «how? » found one of the beautiful and effective answers. The developing and psychotherapeutic potential of fairy tales, for all its obviousness, was not used enough by the practical psychology of education. But fairy tale therapy is effective in working not only with preschoolers or younger students, but also with teenagers and high school students. Moreover, there are psychotherapeutic fairy tales for teachers. Even a simple reading of fairy tales (especially specially created ones) gives an amazing effect and helps a person overcome various life difficulties. Fairy tales are important to child development, both educationally and psychologically, and have been shown to be therapeutically efficacious. O.Breusenko-Kuznetsov, G.Nyzhnyk, D.Sokolov, L.Terletska, N.Tsybulya and others are developing the method of fairy tale therapy in Ukraine. Studies by L.S. Vygotsky, O.V. Zaporozhets, N.S. Karpinskaya showed that a fairy tale is vital to a child, and it is a means for him to know the world around him and himself. In recent literature, fairy tales are often the object the study attracts the attention of representatives of various schools and branches of science, in particular folklorists, literary critics, psychologists, etc. A fairy tale needs a thorough new look using effective tools. In in this regard, the study of issues related to the analysis of fairy tales as a psycho-corrective method of psychological assistance to preschoolers in terms of psychological and pedagogical aspects is appropriate. The research of the above experts is about the possibility use of the method of fairy tale therapy not only in psychological, but also in pedagogical practice for didactic and developmental purposes. As for application of this method in the professional activities of a psychologist, the research on this subject is just beginning to appear on the pages scientific publications. Yes, the possibility and feasibility of using fairy tale therapy in socio-pedagogical practice indicate S. Savchenko, O. Ivanovska, N. Shkarin and others, who consider the fairy tale as a wonderful social pedagogical means of socialization, development and education of personality. At the present stage of development of education the problem of increasing the number of children with behavioral disorders and, accordingly, the problem of preventing and overcoming school non-adaptation, manifested in low performance, deviations from norms of behavior, difficulties in relationships with others. Central in the correctional education of schoolchildren is the optimization of children's activities. The method of fairy tale therapy allows solving a number of problems that arise in children of different ages. The process of fairy tale therapy allows the child to actualize and realize their problems, as well as see different ways to solve them.