ABSTRACT
Children are natural storytellers, and collectors of folklore can get a great deal of enjoyment from recording their tales and legends. On playgrounds, at parties, and around campfires—especially on dark, spooky nights—the stories children tell are amazing in their variety. They range from brief, hastily mumbled renditions to impressively long tales with artistic sound effects: clicks, thumps, screams, and carefully timed pauses. Some children take a lot of pride in their storytelling abilities, while others give little thought to the tales they are telling. But in every case, children’s folktales and legends teach us about the narrators’ personalities, enthusiasms, and anxieties. They reveal community standards and cultural trends, as well as cross-cultural similarities; multinational studies of children’s stories have revealed some striking parallel texts. Classifying the stories’ origins and migrations can be an absorbing task, but delving into their deeper meanings is a process that has interested psychologists, sociologists, and linguists as well as folklorists.
