Children's Books: Tales of Virtue
Fairy Tales and the Virtues for Children
One of the things I love the most about family life is having the opportunity to read to my children. The experience of simply being with the little lives that married love has brought into the world is precious, and there’s nothing quite like finally cracking the spine of a book that you’ve waited years to share with your children if it was a favorite of yours as a child yourself.
But family life is busy, and so providing the opportunity and the materials for children to read on their own is just as important. Some of our family’s favorite stories have been the many versions of the classic folk and fairy tales of the Brother’s Grimm, of Aesop, and as are found in innumerable collections of such tales. Not only are the stories tried and true examples of pure entertainment, but being from an earlier time they are useful for illustrating the glory of honor and virtue (as well as the ignominy of vice and sin).
However, it is often the case that these fairy tales are found in collections made up of hundreds of pages, or that include few—if any—illustrations to spark the imagination of younger readers. Seeing an opportunity, I began to use some of my free time to find old illustrations of classic fairy tales that could be paired with their respective stories. Thus, Tales of Virtue was born, a series of independently published books that pair classic fairy tales with beautiful illustrations worthy of their stories, as well as small lessons on the virtues that the stories illustrate. In addition, each volume only contains a small selection of stories so as to be the average length and size of a standard children’s book.
The first volume is available in paperback and includes three stories: “The Frog King,” “Snow White & Rose Red,” and “Hansel and Gretel.” The book includes a brief forward that introduces children to the concept of virtue, as well as the individual virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude. Each story is included in full, and is accompanied by beautiful colorful illustrations.
The second volume is available in both hardback and paperback—the hardback really is lovely—and includes four stories: “The Straw, the Coal, & the Bean,” “Beauty & the Beast,” “The Hare & the Hedgehog,” and “Little Red-Cap.” In addition to the stories and illustrations, the book includes individually tailored lessons on virtue for each of the tales that are short enough, and simple enough, for even very young children to grasp some of what the story contains by way of virtue and vice.
If these books are something you’re interested in, please consider purchasing them for yourself and for others. I didn’t design them as part of a “get rich quick scheme”—especially since each book sold only nets me about 10% of the selling price (the rest goes into the cost of printing the books and providing Amazon their cut)—I wanted to put them together simply because it seemed a good thing to do.
I put them together because I think our children deserve to be exposed to good literature and beautiful art in a way that makes sense for their age and ability. Creating new editions of stories and illustrations in the public domain seemed a great way to put something beautiful out in the world, and a great way to simply provide something beautiful and useful for my own children.
If these two books prove to be popular, then perhaps more volumes will appear in the future! For now, I hope that these will be enjoyable, and might find a home on the shelves of your own small libraries at home.
Happy reading!
A gallery of select pages from Volume 1
A gallery of select pages from Volume 2
