The Twelve Dancing Princesses retold and illustrated by Ruth Sanderson (traditional/folk literature)

The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a story that was originally one of the Brothers Grimm's fairytales but has been retold in various scenarios. Ruth Sanderson's version begins with a king who lives in his castle with his twelve beautiful daughters. Every night, the king locks his twelve daughters in their shared bedroom and every morning finds that their shoes have been completely worn out. The king offers any of his daughter's hands in marriage to any man who can solve the mystery of his daughters' whereabouts at night. However, after many princes tried to solve the mystery of the twelve princesses, each of the princes disappeared. One day, an old woman walking along a road stumbles upon Michael, a commoner who had heard of the mystery of the princesses' worn out shoes, and she gives him an invisible cloak to help him solve the mystery.  After Michael becomes the castle's gardener, he decides to follow the princesses' at night by using his invisible cloak. Every night, the princesses' used a trap door in their floor to leave the castle and to dance with the missing princes at a palace on a lake. Each prince drank a potion that set an enchantment for the men to only love dancing. After two nights of following the princesses', Michael tells the youngest daughter, Lina, that he has been following them and knows their secret. When the oldest sister discovers Michael knows their secret, she invites him to join them and plans to give him the potion that has bewitched the other princes. However, when Michael is about to drink from the cup, Lina stops him and tells him the truth about the drink, which frees the other princes from their enchantment. Once Michael tells the king about the twelve sisters' secret, he chooses to marry Lina and discovers he will one day inherit the throne.


In my own classroom, I would have the students identify the different components of a fairy tale as I was reading the story. For instance, we could discuss how the book begins with "Once upon a time" and the author incorporates magic into the fairy tale. Also, if we had already studied the components of a fairy tale, I would have the students write their own fairy tale by either using the beginning of the story as a prompt or by letting the students choose their own topic.