My favorite memory of time spent with my mother while living in Tokushima, Japan is her reading of fairy tales and other stories to my sister and me. The words once upon a time would hook my interest from the start, carrying me off to faraway places in my imagination.

Many of these well-known tales were once told to audiences of all ages. For centuries, there had been no attempt to eliminate gory details to spare a child’s sensitivities. In the late 1800’s to mid-1900s–the “golden age of children’s literature”–these stories from the oral tradition were rewritten with children in mind. Their compilers eliminated or toned down the fear-inducing descriptive passages that once passed from one generation to the next by word-of-mouth. By doing so, they could provide young readers with moral guidance by making the lessons hidden within them more digestible.

Many of the folktales we remember from childhood were once shared by travelers moving from eastern to western Europe, and from northern Europe—Scandinavia—to the southern countries of Spain, France, and Italy. In addition, well-known tales such as the One Thousand and One Nights and other collections like it, originated in places much farther away: the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Centuries ago, there were no visible boundaries or fences between countries, and so people shared stories and food as they walked together along dusty roads or gathered around the warmth of a campfire. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written over six centuries ago, provided a framework for this “telling” of tales in the oral tradition. Human, animal, and supernatural “characters” in many of them continue to be told and retold in cultures far from one another, and often bear similarities with respect to theme and plot. Thankfully, those of indigenous authors located around the world, originating in their own First Nations cultures, are being written and published today for all age levels. I only wish I’d had them to read when I was young!

Prince Nicolai and the Empty Box is my first book, and dedicated to my mother. My sister and I became readers at a very young age. Locally, it’s available at Woozles Children’s Bookstore in Halifax, N.S. as well as online at the Canadian-owned Indigo bookstore site.

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