Fairy tales audiobooks page 2

Flower Fables

Flower Fables is Louisa May Alcott’s first book, penned at 16 for Ralph Waldo Emerson’s daughter, Ellen.

The Day Boy and the Night Girl

First appearing in Harper’s Young People as a serial, the piece focuses on the extraordinary tale of a young boy and a girl who have been brought up in a secluded and controlled environment by a wicked witch, incognizant of the world outside of their custom tailored settings. Enriched with magic, fantasy, romance, and allegory, The Day Boy and the Night Girl is a great instance of MacDonald’s excellent use of metaphors to express a deeper meaning to a seemingly simple fairy tale.

The novel begins with the introduction of Watho, a wicked witch who has an insatiable thirst for knowledge. In her pursuit of knowledge, she decides to conduct her very own experiment, ...

The Shadows

“Old Ralph Rinkelmann made his living by comic sketches, and all but lost it again by tragic poems. So he was just the man to be chosen king of the fairies…”

George MacDonald (December 10, 1824 – September 18, 1905) was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister. Though no longer well known, his works (particularly his fairy tales and fantasy novels) have inspired admiration in such notables as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Madeleine L’Engle. The Shadows is one such fairy tale. The strange Shadows spend their existence casting themselves upon the walls and forming pictures of various sorts: mimicking evil actions of those who have done wrong in the hopes of causing their...

Maoriland Fairy Tales
Most of the tales have some basis in history. It is an oral language so all histories have to be remembered and retold. To help with this memory retelling the carvings all have relative information and prompts, stories of Atua (sort of gods) and other people (pakeha) that have been encountered are all blended into the stories.
One of the amazing things to listen to is a person's whakapapa (family line). My son's father can tell his whakapapa right back to first landing in the canoe Aotea. It takes hours with the stories of battles, moving and resettling and then the invasion of British soldiers and settlers. Those pale fairies in one of the recent stories would most probably have been ...
Japanese Fairy Tales

Many of us are familiar with Grimm's Fairy Tales, or children's stories from France, England, China, India and Germany, but are less aware of similar folk tales and children's stories from Japan. Japanese Fairy Tales by Yei Theodora Ozaki captures the exotic flavor, traditions and customs of this ancient land.

Published in 1903 entitled the Japanese Fairy Book, the title was changed in the 1908 edition to Japanese Fairy Tales. Theodora Ozaki was the daughter of a wealthy Japanese aristocrat Baron Ozaki, the first Japanese man to study in the West, and his wife, an American schoolteacher's daughter. The couple separated after a brief marriage and Theodora ...

The Frog Prince and Other Stories

The three charming stories contained in The Frog Prince and Other Tales include a less-known fairy-tale called Princess Belle-Etoile besides the title story and Alladin and the Wonderful Lamp. Published in 1874, the tales are re-told by the famous illustrator Walter Crane, who has also provided some of the most lovely illustrations in the book.

The book makes an ideal gift and both parents and children will certainly enjoy it. It's perfect for bedtime story-reading sessions and kids would love gazing at the beautiful Greek-style illustrations that are scattered throughout the book.

The Frog Prince is a German fairy-tale, which was part of...

The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault
This book is an early collection of ten well-known fairy tales. It is thought to have begun the genre of fairy tales.
Favole di Jean de La Fontaine

Nei 12 volumi delle “Favole” (1669 – 1693) Jean de La Fontaine rinnovò la tradizione esopica, rappresentando la commedia umana. Quest’opera dimostrò il suo amore per la vita rurale e attraverso animali simbolici ironizzò sulla vita della società dell’epoca.

In the 12 volumes/books of “Favole” (1669 – 1693) Jean de La Fontaine renewed Aesop’s tradition, representing the human comedy. This demonstrated his love for country life and by symbolic animals he ironized about his current years society’s life.

Robin Hood
Robin Hood is a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes. The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from ballads or tales of outlaws.
Mother Goose in Prose
Before he wrote the Oz books, L. Frank Baum wrote this book which was the best selling book of 1897. Taking 22 beloved nursery rhymes, he explains their meaning and fascinating history. What is the true story of Little Boy Blue? Why was Mary contrary?

As he says in the introduction, "Many of these nursery rhymes are complete tales in themselves, telling their story tersely but completely; there are others which are but bare suggestions, leaving the imagination to weave in the details of the story. Perhaps therein may lie part of their charm, but however that may be I have thought the children might like the stories told at greater length, that they may dwell the longer upon their f...