The creator of this site, S.E. Schlosser, is an author and independent researcher who travels all over the U.S. to research local folktales. She also holds an MLS from Rutgers University, and is a renowned lecturer on storytelling. The website is very user-friendly and searchable in many modes. Tabs at the top of the page allow searching by story genre (e.g., tall tales, urban legends, etc.), by country, or by ethnic origin. A sidebar menu offers further delineated search categories.Keyword searching and alphabetized story searching are also options. All stories are short retellings by Schlosser. Though she includes information about the story’s origin, and in some cases, alternate versions, she does not include bibliographic information, presumably because the stories are part of oral tradition. This site is accessible to students at the elementary level and up. This site made the ALA Great Websites for Kids list.
This award-winning website casts a very wide net, with over 15,000 articles that span the globe. The site is divided into the areas of mythology, folklore, bestiary of mythical creatures, heroes, an image gallery, pantheon genealogy tables, and a featured miscellany category. The areas homepage includes a drop-down menu that allows searching by specific culture. Once a particular culture has been selected, an alphabetical index of names appears in the sidebar, allowing more specific searching. Users can also use the search box to do a general search. Articles vary in length from a few sentences to several paragraphs. Other notable features include a pronunciation guide, a page of interesting miscellany such as feast days, and links to external sites. Though other sites might be more visually stimulating, this is a great resource for quick reference. The articles are written in a clear, concise manner accessible to students from upper elementary and beyond. Unfortunately, only some articles provide links to references. In spite of this downfall, the site made the ALA Best of list in 2001. Though the site’s copyright reads 2007, updates and new articles continue to be added.
This website is written and maintained by an emeritus professor and folklore scholar from the University of Pittsburgh who continues to research and update the site. It is alphabetically indexed by topic, but does not have a keyword search feature. Under each topic are a list of stories annotated with their country of origin. Clicking on the story links takes the user to a full-text version of the story, which is followed by citations and notes. Tales of European and Native American origin predominate, but other continents are also represented. Though the site is technologically rudimentary and visually plain, it maintains value as a ready reference for comparative folktales. This resource is accessible for students from elementary grades and up.
“Excellent source for comparison studies of specific tales such as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, etc.” -- TeachersFirst.com
This site was created for the purpose of ensuring that the sacred texts of all peoples would not be lost. The creator, an independent scholar, passed away in 2010, but the site is still maintained. The core values guiding the site are religious tolerance and scholarship. The scope is extremely broad: “This site strives to produce the best possible transcriptions of public domain texts on the subject of religion, mythology, folklore and the esoteric.” Religious texts are just the tip of the iceberg. There are ethnographies from cultures with oral traditions, criticisms written in the Age of Reason, grimoires, I Ching, and even UFOlogy. At first glance, the site is not easily searchable, but the sidebar menu of topic links includes a link to a catalog that allows searching by author, title, or subject. Topics include overviews, and bibliographic information is included with each text. This resource is appropriate for high school students and up, and makes one-stop shopping for the reference librarian.
“It is among the closest to being all inclusive and comprehensive in its coverage.” --ARBA, 2013
This visually appealing website extensively covers Greek mythology and links it to classical art and literature. It includes over 1500 pages and over 1200 images of gods, heroes, and other Greek characters. Prominent keyword searching and alphabetical browsing allow the user to go directly to a particular page, and sidebar menus facilitate browsing by category: myth types, biographies, art galleries, popular pages, and random picks. That the information on this site is derived from the classic literature makes it a double-edged sword: it is derived from primary documents and therefore highly accurate, but it is not easy to read. It could serve well as a reference site for the librarian, but may prove more useful to students as a source of images and links to other sources. The sight was last updated in 2011. It was well reviewed by ARBA in 2012.
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