What Fairy Tales Tell Us

Abstract

Children's literature is all oral, written and written content that is created in accordance with the linguistic and strategic development of children between the ages of 2-14, childhood and adolescence education, allows them to explore their emotional and intellectual worlds from different perspectives and enriches their imagination, while also helping them understand the realities of life and gain an artistic perspective (Ciravoğlu, 1999). Şirin (2007) defined children's literature as a transitional period literature where the understanding of children and freedom is placed at its core; organized in accordance with the child's interests, feelings and attitudes; where the content and characters are expressed in a simple and clear language that allows them to play games, helps the child gain a reading habit, develops in the child's sensory world and takes a step towards adulthood. One of the basic functions of children's literature is to ensure that children gain a reading habit and develop a love of reading through quality products (Duran, 2019). As in Sever (2010), the characters in the works provide cultural contributions to the culture of reading by revealing the children's bond with the hero and the desire to go out with the heroes. Children's literature products ensure that the child develops his/her language, acquires new words and changes the rules of the language (Gönen, Katrancı, Uygun and Uçuk, 2011). In addition, these works enable the child to gain different perspectives, think critically and originally, enrich his/her vocabulary (Yıldırım-Bilgen, 2017) and use the language correctly (Sis and Gökçe, 2009). Children's literature works teach correct developments and rules that society should pay attention to; they provide values ​​such as honesty, cooperation and kindness; in short, they prepare the child for life (Arseven, 2005). There are many types of literature included in children's literature. Types such as fairy tales, epics, legends, lullabies, fables, essays, jokes, stories, novels, stories, biographies, children's poems, travel writings, nursery rhymes, riddles, children's theater, and cartoons-comics are the basic works that can be examined in this field (Yıldız and Öztürk Samur, 2018). One of these types, fairy tales, is a form of verbal narration in which the heroes consist of countless extraordinary beings, are told entirely based on imagination, and end with a happy ending stopped by nursery rhymes (Gedik, 2020). The fact that many types of children's literature such as rhymes, paragraphs, riddles, and legends are encountered in fairy tales shows that fairy tales are an inclusive genre. For this reason, fairy tales are vocabulary and rich texts in children's literature works (Baş, 2006). First of all, fairy tales, which enable people to acquire and develop their language skills (Sanders, 2013), play an important role in the transfer and adoption of national and universal values ​​(Karatay, 2007). Nevertheless, fairy tales, which have an important place in developing children's imagination and perceiving abstract concepts (Karatay, 2007), prepare children for real life by contributing to emotional and spiritual development (Gedik, 2020). Finally, fairy tales also play an active role in the transfer of cultural identity to future generations (Arıcı, 2012). This is emphasized in the work titled "What Do Fairy Tales Tell Us?" written by Yücel Feyzioğlu, which examines the place of fairy tales in our lives in detail.