The "true" tales must always have a "moral", that is a positive message to be transmitted.

I think fairly tales are all imaginary stories for motivating children for for adopting ethical and good values in life.

Austrian educator Jalkoci in his study  " Fairy Tales and Present ," said: " Fairy tales are simple stories of primitive man . Their main character suddenly leaves the everyday environment and go into the kingdom of miracles. There he happily overcomes major difficulties and returns as victor in everyday life . With him goodness wins ".

For me fairy tales are methaphors of moral and immoral human behaviours and its consequences dressed in a fantasy gown; sometimes glittering, shiny or smelly, scary or even terrifying. They mostly end up with some take home message but - to be honest - in some cases I've got difficulties in finding them or catching the meaning :)

Dear Darco

What are the stories of children or fairy tales when the reality is bitter. We live in a chaotic world where children are used in the work, in wars. Is it not urgent to curb these phenomena in order to get to the child instead that it is befitting. It is only then that we can speak of tales or stories for children.  

Best regards

 FADEL

Dear @Darko, Fairy Tales, Child Development, And Unconscious Learning - fine blog about the issue! "Fairy tales communicate strong, unconscious messages to children in terms they can grasp and even carry into adulthood. This is because these stories possess genuine resonance and dreamlike power!"

"Some of these stories, like Cinderella, are truly universal, existing all over the world in all languages from Zulu to Swedish, with slight variations: the glass slipper may become a grass one, for example, but in them, surely, we find proof of our common humanity.Still, is this a good reason why we should, you might wonder, continue to read these old and, after all, often frightening tales (children lost in woods and found by a witch who fattens them up to eat them in Hansel and Gretel, or wolves chopped open by hunters so that grandma can escape in Little Red Riding Hood) to our little ones?..." On the Importance of Fairy Tales follows!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-kim/fairy-tales-child-develop_b_397620.html

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dreaming-freud/201406/the-importance-fairy-tales

"A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.” 

C.S. Lewis

@Darko, allow me to enrich your thread.  There is real psychological benefit in fairy tales.  The human mind and human needs haven't changed.

'A story! Tell me a story! I’m sure this request is part of the nightly bedtime ritual of children all over the world. Storytelling, the oral tradition of sharing legends and knowledge, dates back to the inception of humankind. Countless generations of children have grown up listening to the fairy tales that remain popular today. Amidst the many technological amenities we now enjoy at home, isn’t storytelling still the perfect way to share our love of books with our kids and unwind before bedtime?

Again! Please tell me again! Any parent will tell you children become, at some point, obsessed with one of the classic fairy tales.'

http://mamiverse.com/fairy-tale-benefits-38059/

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

― Albert Einstein

http://imaginationsoup.net/2012/02/fairy-tales-are-essential-to-childhood/

A fairy tale is, in way, an incredible fictitious account about magical creatures, and it is usually written for children--dear Darko!

Dear Darco,

Some fine stories and fables with moral conclusions (44 answers) can be found in a similar question I made some times ago.

This is the link:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_story?_tpcectx=profile_questions

I think that these old days fables and fairy tales tent to disappear and replaced by electronic games and videos. Grandfathers and grandmother are the ones that may save the old fable and fairy tales!  

Dear Darco

Nowadays it would be indecent to tell stories or fairy tales to our children but soon tell their stories ogres of contemporary society that uses children to ask alms but more importantly those who use children in part of pedophilia. 

Best regards  

I have heard many fairy tales, during my childhood, from my parents, grandparents, and aunts. Most of them were not real stories but they were imaginative & informative. What I liked about them was the moral significance since in many of them truth beats falsehood or the good triumphs over the evil at the end. I repeated this with my 2 eldest sons, during their childhood, becoming a storyteller to them before they went to sleep. Most of my stories concentrated upon forest animals aiming at inducing them to think a lot and at instilling reasoning & creative skills. However, in these days the mindset of the children has changed & fiction comes to them from the computer, the TV, the ipad, …etc. It is difficult for the parents to supersede these modern “colorful” tools in attracting children.

The "true" tales must always have a "moral", that is a positive message to be transmitted.

Dear Darko,

I think fairy tales are forever! but may need to be adapted to reality of today's children. There will always be room for dreaming - without losing the sense of reality.

all the best,

Vanessa

 Fairy tales continue to enrich our imaginations and shape our lives. Nowadays you can easily find PC games  based on fairy tales.

Dear @Darko, in my country with its great biodiversity, we also have 'animal stories'.  Animals also featured in Red Riding Hood etc.  The ones I liked were about the Deer and the Crocodile/s - how the smart deer outsmarts the predators :)  In the video, Deer 'counted' PREDATOR crocodiles, but it's in Malay.  It's the smart tactic of the Deer to get across the river by stepping on the crocodiles :)

(Researchers need to identify and count predator journals :))

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEWdjrWMDRg

Dear @Eraldo, I am 60 years old and I have not achieved to be a grandfather! I hardly wait for my daughters to become parents! Hope it will be soon! :) I do suppose that you are already a grandfather. Congratulations!

Fairy tales are good stories for children's imagination develop; However most of them are not connected with today's' real word challenge and ethics. As the stories of pretty girls who should wait the warrior or the prince for a future happy life,  could be destructive for girls' personality develop. There is no ethical values taught to girls there. The same with the stories of animals and jungles who could add irrational fears to children and a bad personalty develop too; The better stories are comic stories with some ethical lessons from the good and the bad. In my country some oral stories of 'Djeha' were told by grandparents, today parents prefer video games to stories. Djeha was a 'silly intelligent' comic man whose stories usually carry some moral values , as Mr Been modern TV movies

Grandfathers used to tell stories to grandsons in India, is a common practice. Through such stories, they develop children ethically and  morally. These stories are experience based and children oriented.

Fairy tales generally took place in a far-off time and place. They are typically began, “Once upon a time.” In the land of fairy tales, magical happenings are everyday occurrences.

Bad kings or queens, beautiful but ill-treated girls, and handsome princes are frequent characters in fairy tales. So are poor young men ready for adventure.

A fairy tale often tells the story of an individual. It takes into account the entire life of the hero or heroine, but focuses on a single event such as marriage. Fairy tales generally end happily. Goodness is rewarded, and evil is punished. The traditional closing line of a fairy tale is, “and they lived happily ever after.”

"A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales."

Marie Curie

This is for all dear friends who love fairy tales.  (We're in need of fairy tales to remove our stress.  Let me share the ones that involve animals.  I grew up in a village, and I'm used to worms, insects, birds, frogs etc.)

'The Princess and the Frog is a 2009 American animated musical romantic fantasy-comedy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The 49th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is loosely based on the novel The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker, which is in turn based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale "The Frog Prince"'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDP2yPtDDLk

Here is another fairy tale involving a beast.  It has also become a musical production. Fairy tales remove stress for the listener and the story teller :)  I used to baby sit for my church pastor and his wife when they had to attend night meetings.  They have 4 little wonderful boys.  Enjoy the song!

Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Based on the traditional French fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Beauty and the Beast is the 30th film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Additionally, it is third in the Disney Renaissance period. Starring Paige O'Hara and Robby Benson, Beauty and the Beast focuses on the relationship between the Beast (Benson), a prince who is magically transformed into a monster as punishment for his arrogance, and Belle (O'Hara), a young woman who he imprisons in his castle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YSKhahIdCA

"There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.” 

G.K. Chesterton

"It is not that the child lives in a world of imagination, but that the child within us survives and starts into life only at rare moments of recollection, which makes us believe, and it is not true, that, as children, we were imaginative ? "

Cesare Pavese

Eraldo,

Your quote is nice. ...

Dear @Darko and friends, the following research shows the Importance of Imagination in Children's Cognitive Development!

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703344704574610002061841322

Dear colleagues,thank you for your active participation and recommendations.

"Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale", Hans Christian Andersen

Dear  friends,

"At every moment of our lives we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss."  Paulo Coelho

Thank you all for your valuable contributions.

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again".

C.S. Lewis

"If you see the magic in a fairy tale, you can face the future".

Danielle Steel

Have You noticed that @Kamal have left Research Gate!?

Yes, I have, dear Ljubomir!

Hi I've used a fairy tale structure to analyse real life interviews. This paper gives an account of fairy tales by Propp

Article Governance, tax and folk tales

Very good reading dear @Eraldo! Furthermore, I have found another good link about the fairy tales! "...Parents have stopped reading traditional fairy tales to their children because they are too scary and not politically correct, according to research..."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/4125664/Traditional-fairytales-not-PC-enough-for-parents.html

Fairy tales are rooted in oral traditions and, as I mentioned above, were never given titles, nor did they exist in the forms in which they are told, printed, painted, recorded, performed, filmed, and manufactured today. Folklorists generally make a distinction between wonder folk tales, which originated in oral traditions throughout the world and still exist, and literary fairy tales, which emanated from the oral traditions through the mediation of manuscripts and print, and continue to be created in various forms.

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9676.pdf

Dear Darko:

The stories and fairy tales part of childhood, along with the play, and bring fantasy and expressions of children's desires helping her deal with unconscious aspects. Hearing stories, the child has the opportunity to enrich and feed your imagination, expand your vocabulary, allow your self-identification and self-recognition, learn to accept situations to reflect on the various types of life, and develop logical thinking that favors memory and critical thinking through the manifestation of humor and satisfaction of their natural curiosity.

Children need fairy tales...

http://www.br-online.de/jugend/izi/english/publication/televizion/26-2013-E/vomOrde_bettelheim_engl.pdf

"The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in." W. H. Auden

A dream is often more beautiful than reality. But life is not a fairy tale and one can not only dream!

Yes you are right, Life is not a fairytale, but we can fantasize and daydream....and dreams that nobody can take

I was told by my wife to prepare myself for grandchildren by enriching my knowledge of fairy tales! Most of those which I had known, I have forgotten!

Dear Prof Ljubomir and all friends, the fact that Prof Kamal who is on RG to be a friend to many, and to do no harm to any, certainly shows that life isn't a fairy tale.  In real life, Bandura's third core concept states that LEARNING DOESN'T NECESSARILY PRODUCE A PERMANENT CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR.

But in a fairy tale, everyone can learn LESSONS OF LIFE.  A FROG BECOMES A PRINCE AND A BEAST BECOMES A KING.

Here is a link to many fairy tales that future grandparents can enjoy, and prepare themselves to teach little grandchildren: 

http://www.aesopfables.com/aesop1.html

This story is ANDROCLES AND THE LION.  I liked its moral value: Gratitude is the sign of noble souls.  Leo is also my star sign, but I don't really believe any horoscope.

'A slave named Androcles once escaped from his master and fled

to the forest. As he was wandering about there he came upon a

Lion lying down moaning and groaning. At first he turned to flee,

but finding that the Lion did not pursue him, he turned back and

went up to him.... WATCH THE REST.

http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?1&Androcles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSUWzKsxLZM

Dear @Eraldo, here is a good project : Serbian Fairy Tales! It is very informative web cite with fairy tales ongoing show!

http://www.serbianfairytales.com/

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers.

Hans Christian Andersen

We may be able to enrich the discussion with fables and about the fables. Every nation has its fables! Dositej Obradovic!

Dear @Darko, what is your opinion, as well as opinion of the followers of this thread?

http://www.childrenslibrary.org/icdl/BookPreview?bookid=obrbasn_00380001&route=text&lang=English&msg=&ilang=English

http://rainbowstampclub.blogspot.com/2014_11_01_archive.html

Dear friends, fairy tales strike a chord of great happiness in our hearts.  It's all about happy endings when virtue is rewarded or vice is punished.  In this real world, this isn't often seen, and we see wicked people rising to power and causing suffering to many.  @Eraldo, fairy tales are most SENSIBLE, because deep in our consciousness, we have a conscience.

'The psalmist says, I believe in God; I believe that God cares, and I believe that God cares about me. ..... To have a life worth living we need a God worth serving.'

http://www.preaching.com/sermons/11566818/

I don't think people stop dreaming as they get old, they rejoice telling tales

@Umachandran, you are right.  Ljubomir is waiting to be a wonderful story telling grandpa.  Dear all, here are some fairy tales from my country in the far east.  I'm also from Penang, a British Straits settlement.

'The book I bought in 1999 when I was in Form 3. It’s been 13 years since I bought this! Imagined that I called all bookstores in Penang via Yellow Pages and I finally found this book in Butterworth, Penang!

The Princess Hindered By Moonlit (“Puteri Lindungan Bulan”) – from Kedah;

Cik Siti Wan Kembang & Princess Saadong – from Kelantan;

Princess Walinong Sari – from Pahang; &

Princess Santubong & Princess Sejinjang – from Sarawak

The first one is about a mythical princess from Kedah, The Land Of Peace (Darul Aman); the state where my parents live now; and also the home for most of my mother’s side of family. It was said that once, Fort (“Kota”) Seputeh was the hub for the administration of Kedah Sultanate. Now, so happened that Seputeh is not far from Jitra, of where my parents are now; and it is actually my Mak Lang’s hometown! That is why I am quite excited to narrate this as the first story.'

https://undomiel84.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/the-princesses-of-malaysian-folklore-tales-from-kedah-kelantan-pahang-sarawak/

Fairy tales are symbolic poetry of our fantasies of our dreams in life ....

Well said, dear @ Eraldo

Knowledge is not a series of self consistent theories that converges towards an ideal view; it is rather an ever increasing ocean of mutually incompatible (and perhaps even incommensurable) alternatives, each single theory, each fairy tale, each myth.

Peter Feyerabend

Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont (1711-1780) is the author of the famous story Beauty and the Beast published in 1756..

A beautiful story about the birth of love and how love can transform the way you see your loved ones, as in real life, (and not just in the fairy tale) a person you respect and love could be considered your prince / princess. The film version of Beauty and the Beast produced by Walt Disney Studios, recorded in 1991.

I have very happy memories of fairy tales.My mother used to take me to the library in Toronto to check out the fairy tales.And she was an actress, so she used to act out for

me the different characters in all these fairy tales.

Mike Myers

Dear Arar, my post # 31 is also about Beauty and the Beast, so great minds think alike.  Beauty and the Beast was also a TV series.

Dear Darko, now I understand why you ask about fairy tales on RG.  A wonderful reason!!

"When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true"

Pinocchio

Dear friends @Eraldo, @Darko and all, it could be that parents love their children and want them to develop into real human beings, so FAIRY TALES are the tools to transmit good values.  But when we grow up, and live in the real world the dreams tend to shatter.  But in my place, we learn from a young age that life is harsh and difficult, when we see our dads working so hard to make an honest living.

Dear all,

'When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are,

Everything that you could want will come to you...'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pguMUFyJ3_U

Serbian newspaper Blic have a long term practice to bring to their readers compact discs with fairy tales. It happens every Monday! Russian fairy tales are actual now!

http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Drustvo/542634/DANAS-POKLON-UZ-BLIC-Price-o-ruskim-junacima-koje-deci-pomazu-u-sazrevanju

"If you keep on believing, the dreams that you wish will come true" 

Cinderella   

Dear Darko,

I think everyone, of all ages, should maintain confidence that dreams come true! Otherwise, what's the point of life?

Best wishes,

Vanessa

Peter Pan:

“So come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!”

James Matthew Barrie (The Little White Bird)

Indian oldmen's stories are moral based. Children used to play in the company of grandfather and grandmother and relish and enjoy these. Today even I remember moral based stories which I heard during my childhood.

Like other fairy tales, Indian fairy tales, legends, myths,impart culture, intelligence, ethics and camaraderie to children. The Indian folk tales are full of morals and humor. Friends, watch this one that you will love.  Just as I do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMiEzSv18y4

James Matthew Barrie (1860 –1937) was a Scottish novelist and dramatist. He is most famous as the author of the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up.

"When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. And now when every new baby is born its first laugh becomes a fairy. So there ought to be one fairy for every boy or girl.”

Aging does not stop one for being a child. I have seen many grownup parents sitting, watching cartoon programmes in television and enjoying thoroughly.

Grand parents' experienced based  children's stories are more popular in rural India than Urban one. Such moral based stories are very relished by children.

However, book based  children's stories are popular in Urban India.

I agree with Enzo's point of view.

Dear Enzo, maybe you should use this thought  to create your own quote ...

Ivana Brlić Mažuranić Croatian writer who is recognized in Croatia and abroad as one of the most important writer for children. Worldwide fame and voice "Croatian Andersen" acquired works " Croatian Tales of Long Ago and "Lapitch the Little Shoemaker". Croatian Tales of Long Ago (translated into 40 languages) are one of the most typical examples of her writing style which has been compared by literary critics to Hans Christian Andersen and J. R. R. Tolkien due to the way it combines original fantasy plots with folk mythology. Croatian Tales of Long Ago by Ivana B. Mazuranic published in Japanese in 2010.

“Today at school I will learn to read at once; then tomorrow I will begin to write, and the day after tomorrow to cipher. Then with my acquirements I will earn a great deal of money, and with the first money I have in my pocket I will immediately buy for my papa a beautiful new cloth coat. But what am I saying? Cloth, indeed! It shall be all made of gold and silver, and it shall have diamond buttons. That poor man really deserves it; for to buy me books and to have me taught he has remained in his shirt sleeves... And in this cold! It is only fathers who are capable of such sacrifices!...”

Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

“In the Land of Toys, every day, except Sunday, is a Saturday.

Vacation begins on the first of January and ends on the last day of December.

That is the place for me!

All countries should be like it! How happy we should all be!” 

Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio

Dear Darko and All Colleagues,

Another lesson that I think will serve to any epoch is to believe that "good always wins!" (Sleeping Beauty)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeping_Beauty

From Disney's version:

“All children, except one, grow up. They soon know that they will grow up, and the way Wendy knew was this. One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up. You always know after you are two. Two is the beginning of the end.”

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan