Fairy Tales

I love fairy tales.  I have always loved fairy tales.  Maybe I love them because there is this sense that no matter how dark the situation seems, in the end, things will turn out right.  Or, maybe it's just all the lovely pictures that came with the books I used to read when I was a kid.  Then again, it could be that I always wanted to be a princess.  But I'd like to think that the reason people like fairy tales long after they've grown up has something more to do with the way they embody the idea of hope, the sense of adventure, and the enduring capacity of the human imagination to invent.

People have been trying to define what a fairy tale is for as long as the term has come into common usage.  Are they fairy stories?  Legends?  Myths?  Do they have talking animals, or is it just princes, princesses, and knights?  Are fairy tales simply magical reality, or are they stories we've passed down generation to generation--embodying aspects of culture, history, and life that we believe are important somehow?  Can fairy tales be found in religions, and are they still relevant in the world today?

To all of those questions, I think I have to answer: yes.

Most of all, though, I think fairy tales help us to make sense of the world around us; they give us a way to look at life while immersing us a story that may be as alien or as real as our own lives.  And they remind us of important lessons which shouldn't be forgotten.

Here are a few sites you may want to visit if you, too, love fairy tales.

http://www.storynory.com/  -- Storynory -- a place where you can find audio versions of some of your favorite fairy tales (good for children who like to listen to stories, too!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale -- The Wikipedia page of fairy tale stuff!

http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/index.html -- this is just an amazing site for adult lovers of fairy tales

As for my favorite fairy tale--there are far, far too many to list.  However, one of my favorites, I think, is the story of Sleeping Beauty.  Or maybe it's Cinderella.  Or the Twelve Dancing Princesses....