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Illustration of an open book, which includes images of baking ingredients, a wooden spoon, Little Red Riding Hood and a wolf, along with the title 'Cook up your own fairy tale'.

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Remember fairy tales can be scary! We recommend checking out the resources yourself before sharing with young children.

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In this activity, we’re inviting you to become fairy tale cooks. What’s a fairy tale cook, I hear you ask? Well, you’ll open the story cupboard, explore the ingredients, and examine story recipes from the past. Then you’ll fill your own cauldron, throw in what you’ve learnt, add sprinkles of magic, boil and stir until you create your very own fairy tale.

Are you ready? Okay, let’s go.

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A pumpkin becomes a golden carriage. / Cinderella, retold by C S Evans and illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1919, public domain.

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Join Michael Rosen to find out just what makes fairy tales special, with brilliant animations by Allen Fatimaharan.

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Fairy tales are short stories that lead you into imaginary places where anything can happen.

Watch this film by Michael Rosen to find out more.

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What is a fairy tale? With Michael Rosen

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Cinderella’s ‘ugly sisters’ change into their ball gowns. / Cinderella, retold by C S Evans and illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1919, public domain.

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What are the ingredients of fairy tales?

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What are the ingredients of fairy tales?

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Fairy tales are made up of all sorts of ingredients. These can include:

Strange places: tangled forests, mysterious paths, dusty kitchens, edible houses…

Intriguing characters: talking spiders, wolves, frogs or trees; flying horses, elves, giants, witches, stepmothers, princes, wise women…

Enchanted objects: pumpkins, mice, cooking pots, apples, keys, mirrors, rings…

Transformations: a pumpkin becomes a carriage; a cooking pot heats up without fire; beans grow stalks that stretch up to the land of the giants; a glass slipper leads a prince to his true love.

Powerful children (or spiders!): a girl gets the better of a cruel wolf; a brother and sister escape from a witch’s gingerbread house; a girl breaks free from her mean-spirited sisters and stepmother.

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Cinderella’s fairy godmother turns lizards into footmen. / Cinderella, retold by C S Evans and illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1919, public domain.

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Hansel and Gretel stare at the gingerbread house. / Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories, illustrated by Kay Nielsen, 1925. Usage terms below.

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Little Red Riding Hood meets the wolf. / Little Red Riding Hood, 1810, public domain.

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Fairy tales often feature nasty characters or revolting incidents. But the storyteller describes them as if they were entirely normal - a wolf eats a granny; a horrible sister chops off her toes to squeeze her foot into a tiny glass slipper, a witch tries to eat a brother and sister. Yeah, so what?? Of course, if these things happened in real life, they’d be terrifying. But this isn’t real life – it’s an imaginary world. (By the way, please don’t make your stories too gruesome! Just add a dash of villainy).

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Fairy tales often contain a moral – or lesson – that is designed to help us think about right and wrong. Stories can warn us about the dangers of bad behaviour. And they can inspire us to stand up to bullies.

Now watch these versions of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Anancy and the Magic Pot.

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Join Mara the Storyteller to find out how Cinderella breaks free from her spiteful stepsisters, with help from her magic godmother and some wild dancing at the ball.

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Which ingredients did you spot? Did you find a magic object or two?

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Venture into the forest with Mara the Storyteller, for the spine-tingling story of Little Red Riding Hood and the big bad wolf.

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Little Red Riding Hood told by Mara the Storyteller

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Little Red Riding Hood told by Mara the Storyteller

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What strange places did you come across? How would you stand up to the wolf?

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Little Red Riding Hood told by Mara the Storyteller

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Do you smell that scrumptious scent? Where could it be coming from? Join storyteller, Sandra Agard, as she tells you this classic West African and Caribbean tale about the trickster Anancy-Spiderman and his discovery of the magic pot.

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What everyday object would you inject with magic to make your wishes come true?

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For hundreds of years, fairy tales have travelled through time and space - across dinner tables, villages, cities, deserts, seas, trading routes - told by everyone from grandparents and teachers to traders and sailors.

Until a few centuries ago, most of these tales were not written down in books. Instead, they were shared orally – which means people told them to each other out loud: a granny would tell her grandson; the grandson would tell a friend; the friend would tell her teacher; the teacher would tell the shopkeeper; the shopkeeper would tell a sailor; a sailor would tell a merchant. Nowadays, they’re also shared in books, theatre or films.

We often have memories of the tales told to us at a young age. Parts of fairy tales may be strangely familiar because they remind us of those we heard in early childhood…

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Many Western tales were first collected, written down and published in the 1600s by the French author, Charles Perrault, and in the 1800s by the German story collectors, the Grimm brothers.

Some famous stories exist in different versions in various parts of the world. For example, one of the oldest versions of Cinderella comes from 9th century China - so it’s 1,200 years old! In the story, the girl marries a professor, her slipper is gold, her fairy godmother is a golden fish, and her loathsome family prevent her from attending the local feast!

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Anancy-Spiderman by James Berry / Anancy Spiderman by James Berry. Text and illustration © Estate of James Berry. Book cover design © Estate of Joseph Olubo. Usage terms below.

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The Phoenix of Persia flies away from The Mountain of Gems and The Tree of All Seeds. / The Phoenix of Persia © Tiny Owl Publishing, 2019, written by Sally Pomme Clayton © 2019 and illustrated by Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif © 2019. Usage terms below.

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In this Persian tale, The Phoenix of Persia, the firebird Simorgh becomes the adopted mother of an abandoned prince.

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Yokki and other characters run from their tents to see the Parno Gry. / Yokki and the Parno Gry by © Richard O’Neill and Katharine Quarmby, illustrated by Marieke Nelissen, 2016. Illustrations © Child's Play (International) Ltd. Usage terms below.

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This Roma story features Parno Gry, a magical horse who takes children to wonderful faraway places.

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Authors and storytellers frequently add their own twists to traditional tales. When we cook a recipe handed down by a grandparent, we’ll often add a new ingredient or use new cooking methods. Similarly, as traditional tales are shared across generations, each storyteller adds their own magic. Stories are re-imagined and re-shaped.

Sometimes authors add their own twist if they feel the original tales are a bit out of date – why should a princess get married? Why should a stepmother be evil? Why should a hunter save a little girl from a wolf? Can’t she save herself? Take a look at the stories above. Which bits would you like to twist?

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Quentin Blake’s illustrations of Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks for Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes. / Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl, illustrated by © Quentin Blake, 1982. Usage terms below.

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In Roald Dahl’s re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, the heroine refuses to be outwitted by the Big Bad Wolf: ‘She whips a pistol from her knickers. / She aims it at the creature’s head / And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead.’ In this illustration, resourceful Little Red Riding Hood strides home through the forest in her furry wolf-skin coat and elegant red shoe-boots. In Dahl’s version of Goldilocks, Daddy Bear advises Baby Bear to eat up Goldilocks if he wants his porridge, as it’s in her tummy!

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Handwritten book, which follows Clever Polly outsmarting the wolf and includes illustrations of the characters. / Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf by Catherine Store © Seven Stories. Usage terms below.

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In this story, the Stupid Wolf intends to eat Clever Polly, but she tricks him by filling him up with pie and burns his tongue with toffee. In this way, the author has turned the tale of Red Riding Hood upside down, to give the heroine power.

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Now it’s time to put on your chef’s hat, squeeze your wooden spoon, sprinkle in your magic, close your eyes and cook up your own fairy tale.

·   Which characters will walk through the pages of your book?

·   Where do they live and where will they go?

·   What magical object will they find? What are its powers?

·   What frightens them and how do they survive?

·   Is there a transformation in your story?

·   What do the characters learn? What is the moral?

You may want to make some notes to get your mind moving…

Stir your story cauldron and wait for the story to appear in your mind.

Now follow these instructions to make your own book. Then write your story inside.

Many thanks to Marina Warner, whose brilliant scholarly work on this subject has inspired this activity.

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All content is available for educational purposes only, unless otherwise stated.

Cinderella, retold by C S Evans and illustrated by Arthur Rackham, 1919, public domain.

Little Red Riding Hood, 1810, public domain.

Hansel and Gretel and Other Stories, illustrated by Kay Nielsen (1925), reproduced by permission of Hodder Children’s Books, an imprint of Hachette Children’s Books, Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment, London imprint, EC4Y 0DZ.

Anancy Spiderman by James Berry. Text and illustration © Estate of James Berry. Book cover design © Estate of Joseph Olubo. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

The Phoenix of Persia © Tiny Owl Publishing, 2019, written by Sally Pomme Clayton ©2019 and illustrated by Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif ©2019. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work. Held by © Tiny Owl Publishing, 2019, written by Sally Pomme Clayton © 2019 and illustrated by Amin Hassanzadeh Sharif © 2019.

Yokki and the Parno Gry. Reproduced by kind permission of Child's Play (International) Ltd. Text copyright © 2016 Richard O’Neill and Katharine Quarmby. Illustrations copyright © 2016 Child's Play (International) Ltd. First published 2016 by Child's Play. All rights reserved. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.

Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl: Quentin Blake's sketches and original artwork. © Quentin Blake 1982. Except as otherwise permitted by your national copyright laws this material may not be copied or distributed further.

Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf, 1950, by Catherine Storr, © Seven Stories: The National Centre for Children's Books. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Please credit the copyright holder when reusing this work.