The Polar Express is a children's book written by Chris Van Allsburg and published by Houghton Mifflin in 1985. The book is now widely considered to be a classic Christmas story for young children. The book is set partially in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the author's hometown, and was inspired in part by Van Allsburg's memories of visiting the Herpolsheimer's and Wurzburg's department stores as a child. It was adapted as an Oscar-nominated motion-capture film in 2004 starring Tom Hanks and...

“The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher” was adapted from a children's book, written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was originally published in July 1906. Jeremy's origin lies in a letter she wrote to a child in 1893. She revised it in 1906 and moved its setting from the River Tay to the English Lake District. The tale reflects her love for the Lake District. Potter's tale pays homage to the leisurely summers her father and his companions spent sport fishing at rented country estates in...

“Beauty and the Beast” was adapted from a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740. Her lengthy version was abridged, rewritten, and published by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont in 1756 to produce the version most commonly retold. Later, Andrew Lang retold the story in Blue Fairy Book, a part of the Fairy Book series, in 1889.  In 1991, Beauty and the Beast was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation as a feature film. Beauty and...

“The Tale of Tom Kitten” is based on the story written by Beatrix Potter released in September 1907. The tale is about manners and how children react to them. Tabitha Twitchit, a cat, invites friends for tea. She washes and dresses her three kittens for the party, but within moments the kittens have soiled and lost their clothes while scampering about the garden. Tabitha is "affronted". She sends the kittens to bed, and tells her friends the kittens have the measles. Once the tea party is...

Tom Thumb, or Hop o' My Thumb, also known as Little Thumbling, Little Thumb, or Little Poucet (French: Le petit Poucet), is one of the eight fairytales published by Charles Perrault, now world-renowned. The small boy defeats the ogre. This type of fairytale, in the French oral tradition, is often combined with motifs, similar to Hansel and Gretel; one such tale is The Lost Children. The story was first published in English as Little Poucet in Robert Samber's 1729 translation of Perrault's...

The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in July 1908. Potter composed the book at Hill Top, a working farm in the Lake District she bought in 1905. Following the purchase, her works began to focus on country and village life, incorporating large casts of animal characters and sinister villains. Jemima Puddle-Duck was the first of her books set wholly at the farm with background...

The story of “Little Sammy” was adapted from a children's book written and illustrated by Scottish author Helen Bannerman and published by Grant Richards in October 1899. As one in a series of small-format books called The Dumpy Books for Children, the story was popular for more than half a century. Bedtime Stories for Children is produced by Magic Monorail

"Puss in Boots" was based on an Italian fairy tale from the mid 1600’s, which later spread throughout the rest of Europe, about a cat who uses trickery to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for his penniless master. Puss in Boots has provided inspiration for composers, choreographers, and other artists over the centuries. The cat appears in the third act of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty. In 2011, Puss in Boots became an American computer-animated comedy...

The tale of “Rapunzel” was published by the Brothers Grimm in 1812. Their source was a story published by Friedrich Schulz in 1790. Earlier variants include "Petrosinella" in 1634, and "Das Mährchen von der Padde" published a few months before Grimm's version.  In 2010, Walt Disney Animation Studios adapted the fairy tale into the animated feature film “Tangled”. Bedtime Stories for Children is produced by Magic Monorail

"The Three Little Pigs" is a fable about three pigs who build three houses of different materials. A Big Bad Wolf blows down the first two pigs' houses, made of straw and sticks respectively, but is unable to destroy the third pig's house, made of bricks. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story is thought to be much older. The earliest version takes place in Dartmoor with three pixies and a fox before its best known version appears in English Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs in...

The story of "Pinocchio" was adapted from the children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio (1883).  Pinocchio was carved by a woodcarver named Geppetto in a Tuscan village. He was created as a wooden puppet, but he dreams of becoming a real boy. He is notably characterized for his frequent tendency to lie, which causes his nose to grow. Pinocchio is one of the most reimagined characters in children's literature. His story has been adapted into many other media, notably the 1940 Disney film...

“The Tale of the Frog Prince” was adapted from a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Traditionally, it is the first story in their folktale collection

“The Tale of Benjamin Bunny” is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter, and first published by Frederick Warne & Co. in September 1904. The book is a sequel to The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), and tells of Peter's return to Mr. McGregor's garden with his cousin Benjamin to retrieve the clothes he lost there during his previous adventure. In Benjamin Bunny, Potter deepened the rabbit universe she created in Peter Rabbit, and, in doing so, suggested the rabbit world was...

“The Tale of Peter Rabbit” was adapted from the children's book written by Beatrix Potter that follows mischievous and disobedient young Peter Rabbit as he gets into, and is chased around, the garden of Mr. McGregor. The tale was written for five-year-old Noel Moore, son of Potter's former governess Annie Carter Moore, in 1893. It was revised and privately printed by Potter in 1901 after several publishers' rejections, but was printed in a trade edition by Frederick Warne & Co. in 1902....

"Hansel and Gretel" was adapted from a fairy tale collected by the German Brothers Grimm and published in 1812 in Grimm's Fairy Tales. Hansel and Gretel are a brother and sister abandoned in a forest, where they fall into the hands of a witch who lives in a house made of gingerbread. The cannibalistic witch intends to fatten the children before eventually eating them, but Gretel outwits the witch and kills her. The two children then escape with their lives and return home with the witch's...

"Three Billy Goats Gruff" is adapted from a Norwegian fairytale by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr, first published between 1841 and 1844. It has an "eat-me-when-I'm-fatter" plot. The first version of the story in English appeared in George Webbe Dasent's translation of some of the Norske Folkeeventyr, published as Popular Tales from the Norse in 1859. The heroes of the tale are three male goats who need to outsmart a ravenous troll to cross the bridge to...

Thumbelina is a literary fairy tale written by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen first published on December 16, 1835 in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the second instalment of “Fairy Tales Told for Children.” Thumbelina is about a tiny girl and her adventures with marriage-minded toads and moles. She successfully avoids their intentions before falling in love with a flower-fairy prince just her size. Thumbelina is chiefly Andersen's invention, though he did take inspiration from tales of...

"Sleeping Beauty" or "Little Briar Rose", also titled in English as "The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods", is a classic fairy tale about a princess who is cursed to sleep for a hundred years by an evil fairy, to be awakened by a handsome prince at the end of them. The good fairy, realizing that the princess would be frightened if alone when she awakens, uses her wand to put every living person and animal in the palace asleep, to awaken when the princess does.  The earliest known version of...

"How the Leopard got his spots" was adapted from a classic children's story 

“The Gingerbread Man” was adapted from a folktale about a gingerbread man's escape from various pursuers until his eventual demise between the jaws of a fox. "The Gingerbread Boy" first appeared in print in the May, 1875, issue of St. Nicholas Magazine in a cumulative tale which, like "The Little Red Hen", depends on repetitious scenes featuring an ever-growing cast of characters for its effect.

"Rumpelstiltskin" is based on German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. The story is about a fairy who spins straw into gold in exchange for the Queen’s firstborn. The same story pattern appears in numerous other cultures including the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland, Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, South America, Hungary, Japan and France. The Cornish tale of Duffy and the Devil plays out an essentially similar...

"The Golden Goose" is a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm.  The Brothers Grimm were academics, philologists, cultural researchers, lexicographers and authors who together collected and published folklore during the 19th century. They were among the first and best-known collectors of German (and European) folk tales, and popularized traditional oral tale types such as "Cinderella", "The Frog Prince", "Hansel and Gretel", "Rapunzel", "Little Red Riding Hood", "Rumpelstiltskin",...

"The Elves and The Shoemaker" is based on a set of fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm about a poor shoemaker who receives much-needed assistance from helpful elves. The original story is the first of three fairy tales contained in the German Grimm's Fairy Tales under the common title "Die Wichtelmänner"

"The Princess and the Pea" is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her sensitivity. The tale was first published by Andersen in 1835. Andersen had heard the story as a child, and it likely has its source in folk material, possibly originating from Sweden, as it is unknown in the Danish oral tradition. Neither "The Princess and the Pea" nor Andersen's other tales of 1835 were well received by Danish critics, who...

“Chicken Little” is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries. The story was originally part of the oral folk tradition and only began to appear in print after the...