Happily Ever After : Sharing Folk Literature with Elementary and Middle School Students

As an instructional tool, folk literature can foster literacy, promote cultural awareness, and create connections with the content areas.

Yet most of the professional literature on folklore addresses either the scholarly aspects of the genre or how teachers can encourage their students to read it.

Few resources exist that provide teachers with a background about folk literature and how to use it in their classrooms.

Happily Ever After fills that gap by offering ideas for teaching folklore as a literary genre to children in grades K-8.

Rooted in contemporary views of reading and literature-based instruction, this collection of essays defines folk literature and its subgenres, provides strategies for incorporating folklore into and across the curriculum, and describes techniques for teaching students to write their own folk stories.

Contributors to the volume offer a variety of perspectives and approaches that make the book relevant to teachers, teacher educators, librarians, and administrators.