Reference Reviews

Reference for Students

The Greenwood Library of American Folktales. Edited by Thomas A. Green. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006. 4 vols. 1521 p. $299.95. ISBN 0-313-33722-1.

Folktales are a part of the culture of a country, and students can learn how people live and the weather and aspects of the environment through reading the folklore. Organized by geographic regions of the U.S, each section begins with an introduction listing the states, the terrain and climate and the occupations, lifestyles, landscapes and a brief history. This is followed by "Origins," "Heroes, Heroines, Tricksters, and Fools," "The Powers that Be: Sacred Tales" and "The Powers that Be: Secular Tales." For each folktale, the title and tradition bearer are given, the source, the date, the original source and the national origin. An opening paragraph relates to such things as an explanation of the legend, a comment "variant of Beauty and the Beast" and motif. This has any number of applications in high school, from drama classes with students telling folktales to a comparison of the folktale to a study of geography matching the tale to reality. Also, comparisons of the different motifs in tales across Indian tribes could be discussed. High school librarians should tell their elementary counterparts about this reference, and offer to let them use it when their classes study Native American tribes during their study of the U.S. Appendixes include some of the original versions, a two-page glossary, the bibliography to the volume and the general bibliography. Each volume has the cumulative index. Vol. 4 has an appendix with information gleaned from "Cyberspace." While similar to the other entries and divided as are the others, the "tradition bearer" is similar to many things in cyberspace, "unavailable." This provides an interesting approach to a lesson about truth on the Internet. A 2-page glossary ends the volume and each has its own bibliography.