A young woman, mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, but carrying within her a good and gracious heart, wins the love of prince with the help of her fairy godmother. The original tale of Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault, inventor of the modern fairy tale and creator of such timeless characters as Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots. It is among the most beautiful and enduring of all stories, and has inspired hundreds of adaptations, including two Di...

Beauty and the Beast (French: La Belle et la Bête) is a traditional fairy tale which tells the story of a widowed merchant who lives in a mansion with his six children, three sons and three daughters. All his daughters are very beautiful, but the youngest, Beauty, is the most lovely, as well as kind, well-read, and pure of heart; while the two elder sisters, in contrast, are wicked, selfish, vain, and spoiled. They secretly taunt Beauty and treat her more like a servant than a sister. The ...

The Real Story of Snow White In this oral history of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the artists, animators, directors, storymen, and other notables who helped create Walt Disney's greatest film reveal in their own words what it was like to shape cinematic history, and to work at the fledgling Disney Studio.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) is a novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells the story of a girl named Alice who falls down a rabbit-hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar and anthropomorphic creatures. The tale is filled with allusions to Dodgson's friends (and enemies), and to the lessons that British schoolchildren were expected to memorize. The tale plays with logic in ways that have made the st...

The Jungle Book (1894) is a collection of stories written by Rudyard Kipling.The tales in the book (and also those in The Second Jungle Book which followed in 1895, and which includes five further stories about Mowgli) are fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. The verses of The Law of the Jungle, for example, lay down rules for the safety of individuals, families and communities. Kipling put in them nearly everything he knew or "heard or dreamed about th...

A California earthquake sends Dorothy Gale and her new friends--Zeb the farm boy, Jim the cab-horse, and Eureka the mischievous kitten--tumbling through a crack in the ground. Deep beneath the earth, Dorothy is reunited with her old friend the Wizard of Oz and his troupe of nine tiny piglets. Together, Dorothy, the Wizard, and their friends travel through many fantastic lands, where they encounter the Mangaboos, people growing like vegetables in the ground; cross the Valley of Voe, where d...

"The Birthday of the Infanta" is a historical fiction for children by the Irish author Oscar Wilde. The action of "The Birthday of the Infanta" takes place in Spain at an unspecified point in the past. It is the twelfth birthday of the Infanta, the only daughter, and only child, of the King of Spain. For her entertainment, an ugly young dwarf dancer is brought to the court. The Dwarf is completely unaware of how hideous he looks and does not realize that the reason that others laugh in his...

A magician tricks Aladdin, the son of a very poor tailor, into getting a real magic lamp from a hidden cavern. Aladdin is actually able to use the magic lamp to get real treasures for his family and marry the real Sultan's daughter, Princess Buddir. But the magician wants his wonderful lamp back, and Aladdin must actually outwit him again.

A short story from the Classic Shorts collection: The Happy Failure by Herman Melville

'Beauty and the Beast' is a magical tale of love, understanding, and triumph. Late one night a merchant becomes lost in the woods and stumbles upon a seemingly deserted castle. Hungry and tired, he enters the castle and finds a feast laid out on a grand table. Finding no one else in the castle, he eats the food himself. In the morning as he leaves he finds a beautiful rose bush in the garden and picks a single flower for his daughter Belle. Suddenly a beast appears and tells him he must di...