Blog Posts by Subject: Mythology and Folktales

Considering these stories started as oral tradition, it seems fitting to enjoy them as audiobooks.

This recommended reading list includes classic and recent pictures books, and comics created mostly by Asian Pacific American authors and illustrators - great for young readers ranging from babies and toddlers to elementary school students.

Whether we've ever put pen to paper to spin a yarn (or fingers to keyboard), we're all storytellers. And, in a strange way, we are our stories. See what philosophers have shared about this very point across history.

These books blend together a rich combination of history, fable, and illustrations that engage and teach children the importance of America's cultural diversity.

This familiar trope plays out in a complex web of nail-biting intrigue in Gillian Flynn's popular mystery novel and screenplay Gone Girl, but this theme of punishing a philandering spouse to the extreme has ancient roots.

This Halloween, staff of the Word Languages Collection at Mid-Manhattan Library would like to introduce our readers to some unusual creatures from around the globe.

October’s Open Book Night began with a 19th-century slasher story. We discussed Lizzie Borden and the fascinating tale of how she murdered her mother and father, and got away with it. Many more creepy suggestions followed.

Why did this happen and how could it have happened? You’ll have to read the accounts, the theories and stories and figure that part out for yourself. The following are recommended nonfiction and fiction books on the topic from children’s, YA and adult collections.

Little Red Riding is the story of a girl and a big bad wolf in the woods. Here are some retellings of the classic tale that appeal to modern day teens.

Many children today are only familiar with the neat and tidy endings to ooey-gooey, sunshine stories. While these types of stories most certainly have their place in childhood, isn't it much more interesting when something unexpected, dark, or silly happens instead?

Rapunzel is a german fairy tale about a beautiful young maiden who has been impriosoned in a tower by an evil witch. Here are several retellings of the fairy tale that appeal to modern day teens.

You know that romantic tale of a young woman who runs away to the woods to escape a wicked Queen. Here are several retellings of the fairy tale that appeal to modern day teens.

These titles give the back story of our favorite fairy tale characters, tell what happens after "happily ever after," or when people from our world are tossed into the fairy tale world.

You know that romantic tale of the orphaned girl with a cruel stepfamily, who later becomes the belle of the ball and finds true love after fitting into a glass slipper. Here are several retellings of the fairy tale that appeal to modern day teens.

You know that romantic tale of one fair maiden and a prince who has been cursed to look like a beast. The love of the young woman helps to free the prince from the curse and he becomes a handsome young man once again. Here are several retellings of the fairy tale that appeal to modern day teens.

On Halloween, we pull back the curtain between real and unreal, reveling in the spooky, mysterious, and inexplicable. What better way to celebrate the holiday than communing with the spirits and ghosts who reach out to us from the pages of the Rare Book Division?

Get ready for the worst of the bad; these villains will make you remember just how Stygian children's stories can be.

If you want a YA book with demon lovers, fairy tale-Greek mythology mashups, wicked heroines, a castle full of shadowy secrets, and a passionate romance that begins with a murder attempt, look no further.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was controversy surrounding The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales. The time was in fact the early 1990s, and the places were California and Arizona. In 1990, a California school district pulled an illustrated edition of Little Red Riding Hood by Trina Schart Hyman (originally called Little Red-Cap in the Brothers Grimm 1812 version) from a first-grade recommended reading list. The assistant