Fiction Genres
Fairy Tales
Definition: Literary
genre that is a story, usually for
children, about elves, hobgoblins, dragons, fairies, or other magical
creatures.
Examples:
Hansel and Gretal; Jack and the
Beanstalk; Goldilocks
and the Three Bears
Fantasy
Definition: Literary genre that is an
imaginative or fanciful work, esp. one dealing with supernatural or unnatural
events or characters.
Examples: The
Book of Three; Five Children and It; A Wrinkle in Time
Folk Tales
Definition:
Literary genre that is a tale or legend originating and traditional among a people or folk, especially forming part of the oral
tradition of the people. Any
belief or story passed on traditionally, especially one considered to be based on superstition.
Examples:
Cinderella; Little Red Riding Hood
Tall
Tales
Definition:
Literary genre that is an extravagantly and humorously exaggerated story of
the backwoods exploits of an
American frontiersman.
Examples:
Johnny Appleseed; Billy the Kid; Buffalo Bill
Fable
Definition:
Literary genre that is a brief allegorical
narrative, in verse or prose, illustrating a moral thesis or satirizing human beings. The
characters of a fable are usually
animals who talk and act like people
while retaining their animal traits.
Examples:
The Boy Who Cried Wolf; The City
Mouse and the Country Mouse
Adventure
Definition: Literary genre pertaining to an
exciting or very unusual experience,
participation in exciting undertakings
or enterprises, a bold, usually risky
undertaking, or hazardous action of
uncertain outcome.
Examples: Island
of the Blue Dolphin; The Princess Bride
Mystery
Definition: Literary genre whose plot involves
a crime or other event that remains
puzzlingly unsettled until the very end.
Example:
Flatfoot Fox and the Case of the Missing Eye
Historical
Definition: Literary genre pertaining to,
treating, or characteristic of history
or past events, based on or
reconstructed from an event, custom, or style, in the past, or having once existed or lived in the
real world, as opposed to being part
of legend or fiction or as
distinguished from religious belief.
Example: Separate
But Not Equal
Realistic
Definition:
Literary genre interested in, concerned
with, or based on what is real, practical, pertaining to, characterized by, or given to the
representation in literature or art of
things as they really are, or resembling
or simulating life.
Examples:
Drawing Lessons; Journey; Sarah, Plain and
Tall
Science
Definition:
Literary genre in which a background of
science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Many of the events recounted in a
science fiction story are within the realm of future possibility like robots, space travel, interplanetary war, or invasions from outer space.
Examples:
The Giver; The Time Machine; The Aliens
Other Genres
Novel of manners: witty form of comedy that depicts and often satirizes the
manners of a contemporary society. Sense
and Sensibilities is a romance novel/novel of manners
Nonfiction
Genres
Informational
Definition: Literary genre that is intended
for teaching and related informational purposes primarily intended to educate rather than
entertain.
Biography
Definition: Literary genre that is a written
account of another person’s life or
the reconstruction in print or on
film, of the lives of real men and women.
Autobiography
Definition: Literary genre that is a history
of a person’s life written or told by that person or an individual’s interpretation of his own life.
