Summary

Introduction

The aim of this research was to make a practical work which is presented in Kanepi Gymnasium. The practical research was carried out in form 8. I started my research in June 2015 and finished it in May 2016.

The present summary consists of the following parts: Introduction, History, Procedure, Result, Conclusion. It describes all the research and practical work done.

My idea for the research was to make a fairy tale book featuring the origins of three well known fairy tales. My job was to draw the illustrations, translate the origins into Estonian and write a little review of every fairy tales history. I chose the tales of Snow White, Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty and the name of the book was going to be “The lost pages”.

History

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features fantasy characters, magic and enchantments and takes place once a upon time in a far away land rather than reality.  It is difficult to explore the history of the fairy tales because there are only the written sources left but most of the fairy tale existence has been in oral.

Fairy tales are as old as humanity but they were first marked out as genre at the time of 16^th century by the writers of Renaissance, such as Giambattista Basile. Then they became more popular in 17^th century due the work of Charles Perrault.

After Perrault came Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm who are most well known fairy tale authors up to today. They wrote down a big part of German fairy tales. Another famous fairy tale author is Hans Christian Andersen, who was from Denmark.

Fairy tales are a very important part of culture because they reflect the beliefs and priorities of the time and people. These tales also give us a change to look back into the history.

Procedure

I started my research by drawing the illustrations. I made all the paintings with watercolours and used ink pen and acrylic for elaboration. One picture took about one to two months to make. After finishing the pictures I started translating the fairy tales from English to Estonian. Translating the fairy tales of Snow White and Red Riding Hood was easy but translating the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty was quite difficult. The source of the fairy tales was a homepage of Professor D. L. Ashliman.

All the fairy tales were afterwards edited by a professional editor. When I was done with the translating I started writing the review of history of every fairy tale. Longer versions of these texts can be seen in my blog but the short summaries are viewed in the book.

I had all the materials for the book ready in January and then my mother started to put together the book. The fairy tale book “The lost pages” went to printing house at the end of February.

Result

The book came out absolutely magnificent. I loved it very much. The book looked very beautiful it was just like something I would have wanted for myself as a kid. The illustrations were nice and the texts were interesting. Lots of other people liked the book as well. I also had two book presentations, one in the school and the other in the book store of Apollo.

Conclusion

To sum up I really liked this research. The whole process of making the book was very pleasant for me. I enjoyed doing something that I actually like. The outcome of my hard work was also wonderful. I was also very glad that so many people liked my book and found joy in it. I hope that one day I will be capable of doing another project like this.

References

Fairy tale. Wikipedia. Read 26.04.2016 address https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy_tale