Covers tales that are the foundations of the world's traditions, literature, and popular culture and are fundamental to daily life.

From the Amazon to the Arctic, the world is teeming with diverse cultures. There's no better way for students to explore the world's cultural diversity than through its folktales. Presenting tales from the foundations of the world's traditions, literature, daily life, and popular culture, The Greenwood Library of World Folktales: Stories from the Great Collections gathers together a vast array of folktales and arranges them according to region or cultural group, thus allowing students to quickly and conveniently learn about the tales of particular cultures. Some of these stories have been told for centuries, while others have emerged only in recent times. The four-volume set includes introductory essays in addition to explanatory headnotes, and provides bibliographies on particular regions as well as a selected, general bibliography. The most comprehensive work of its kind, this set gives students and general readers a guided tour of the world's folktales. Each volume of the set is devoted to a particular broad geographic region: Volume 1: Africa, The Middle East, Australia and Oceania Volume 2: Asia Volume 3: Europe Volume 4: North and South America Accessible, informative, and entertaining, this book will help literature students learn how to analyze texts and understand the traditions at the heart of many of the world's literary masterpieces. It will also help social studies students learn about the world's cultures and respect ethnic diversity.

Paul Bunyan, Br'er Rabbit, Bluebeard, and Billy the Kid. These are just some of the many character alive today through folktales. A goldmine for students, storytellers, and general readers, this massive work gives easy access to the stories and legends that have captivated us for generations and continue to influence film, television, literature, and popular culture. The most ambitious undertaking of its kind, this collection conveniently groups American folktales by region and includes common and less familiar stories from a wide range of ethnic traditions. It also provides a generous sampling of electronic lore circulating on the Internet. Introductions, notes, appendices, and other helpful aids cover the fascinating background of these tales and bring them alive for students of history, literature, social studies, and the arts. Included are selections from various types of tales, such as legend, joke, tall tale, personal narrative, and myth, along with a generous sampling of electronic lore circulating on the Internet. Introductions, notes, appendices, and other aids link the tales to their origins and afterlives, so that students in social studies classes can learn about American history and culture, while literature students can learn about language, genres, and dialects.

Covers tales that are the foundations of the world's traditions, literature, and popular culture and are fundamental to daily life.

Beasts of the World is a seven-part series, which seeks to investigate the histories, evidence, and common theories surrounding the numerous cryptid creatures that have been reported around the globe. In Volume 1. - Hairy Humanoids, we examine the diverse collection of hairy, bipedal, man-like monsters that are believed to inhabit the world’s remote and lonely regions and ask the question - do they represent a single species, or, could there be other lesser-known varieties of Wildmen, yet to be revealed? This book seeks to classify some of these distinct kinds and proposes a separation (even when two or more ‘types’ or ‘species’, appear to be sharing a similar geographic area) based upon key physiological and behavioural differences. And so, we find that the Man-Ape – Bigfoot of the Pacific Northwest, is something quite different to the Wildman – Almasti, of the Caucuses Mountains; and that the Relict Ape – known as the Yeti, is more akin to the Florida Skunk Ape, than the Chinese Yeren... Are these mysterious monsters surviving Gigantopithecus, extant Neanderthals, undiscovered apes, hidden tribes, or simply folklore and fable, repackaged for the modern world? Join me, as I go in search of these Hairy Humanoids and the many yet to be discovered Beasts of the World.