Fairy tales for teenagers – a compilation

Powerful tales

Fairy tales are typically strong material: an archetypal protagonist confronting and overcoming problems, and so moving into the next phase of their life.

This list is compiled from suggestions on the Storytell listserv, offered by tellers experienced in using them with teenagers. (My thanks to all.)
Below the compilation, I have added a few tales from my own video gallery which I often tell to this age group.

• Mr Fox – watch out for Prince Charming (An Activity Teaching Pack based on this tale is available).
• The Black Prince (aka The Warrior in Black) an Egyptian tale. Especially for teen boys: ruthless force may win battles, but it won’t win what you really want.
• Petrosinella (or Rapunzel) they sometimes pick up on addiction.
• With Aschenputtel (aka Cinderella) we can talk about what people would do to gain wealth and power (plus I like watching them squirm at the foot mutilation).
• The Girl Without Hands – a Grimms’ tale of domestic abuse. (I tell The Armless Maiden, a version of this tale based on Pete Castle’s telling on his CD Tapping at the Blind. Here the incest and mutilation are explicit and graphic – a tale I would only tell to teenagers in very specific situations!)
• With Sleeping Beauty we talk about rape and how ‘she didn’t say no’ is not the same as yes.
• I told Snow White last month as it was recorded for the Grimms’ first edition. They could hardly believe how creepy the prince was, having Snow White’s coffin carted wherever he went.
• They love finding out the endings they’d never heard before – the evil queen in Snow White dancing to her death, Sleeping Beauty’s cannibalistic mother in law, Rapunzel giving birth to twins in exile.
• Scheherazade.
• Davy and the Devil is one teens ask for again and again. (The Queen of the Fishes is another version.)
• They get real quiet and attentive for Thomas the Rhymer.
• When we did storytelling units with 7th graders (12 & 13 years old) in almost every class there was a girl who wanted to tell the Twelve Dancing Princesses and a boy who wanted to tell Godfather Death.
• Owl from The Magic Orange Tree, collected by Diane Wolkstein… “Owl thought he was ugly…..”
• The White Cat from the French tradition seems to pique their interest. And ever since, I started playing with fairy tales, The Snow Queen can really be powerful for close siblings, especially when one is hitting their changes before the other.
• Pretty Maid Ibronka: Antagonist in this Hungarian tale (which has Slavic variants) is an oopir, a vampire-like creature, and that brings it into the realm of spookiness/spiritualism. In the end, the heroine is redeemed when she faces her youthful mistakes, so it offers hope to older teens who may fear that some mistakes in judgment during their adolescence have set them on the wrong path. (Also redemptive for twenty- and thirty-somethings who’ve changed course since their teens.)
• In schools, I definitely include tales that are connected to the literature they are studying, which makes anything from the Arabian Nights (including Scheherazade herself) or Chaucer fair game, and it pleases educators, who are, after all, the ones hiring you.
• The Dream Diviner and the Snake on the vast website of folk tales maintained by Yoel Perez
• The Weeping Lass, aka The Crying Lass at the Crossroads. A powerful tale of the limits of grieving. (I shall record this and upload to the video gallery late 2024.)
• And of course, the fairy tale which prompted this collection, The Well of the World’s End.
• Epics
  Jay Leeming wrote: All of the epics have worked well for me with teenage audiences, though I realize they do not qualify as Fairy Tales. But Gilgamesh, the Odyssey, and the Mahabharata (not to mention Norse myths) have each provided me with ways to reach teenagers both in classrooms and in theaters.

Further tales from my video gallery which I often tell to teenagers

• Blue Rose – finding a partner
• Nix, Nought Nothing – one of the oldest fairy tales
• The Pleiades – after being rescued, this princess chooses for herself how the tale should end
• Old Rinkrank – a Grimms’ fairy tale in which a young girl becomes a woman
• Princess of the Roses – a beautiful Palestinian fairy tale
• King Erysichthon – a dark Greek tale of hubris and nemesis
• Lute Player – a Russian folk tale of war, enslavement and liberation
• The Cruel Sister – a tale of sibling rivalry
• Wood of One Hundred Oaks – a Tuscan fairy tale showing the strength which comes from the smile of the one you love
• Khan’s Riddles – a Kyrgyzstan tale of choosing a partner
• Wounded Selkie – a tale of hate, revenge, forgiveness, reconciliation and understanding
• Silent Princess – a thoughtless boy, an incomprehensible curse, a hazardous search – and an ending together
• Death in the Nut – a tale in which Jack learns that death is not only inescapable, but also essential
• Death and the Gardener – another tale of the inescapability of death
• Land Where No One Ever Dies – an Italian folk tale on the same theme
• Stolen Bairn and the Sìdh – a tale of a mother’s determination and endurance
• Mill that Ground Out Silver Coins – a great comic tale from Sweden with a feisty protagonist
• King Midas and the Touch of Gold – a classic story of unintended consequences

Not a tale, but a 40-sec. video of why teenagers might find storytelling “cool“.

Deep tales As my video gallery has become very extensive, I have created this compilation of stories exploring some of the depths of the human psyche. These are tales I often tell to teenagers.

Tad-Tales for Teens is a related compilation.

Videos for children to watch is a selection for younger children.

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