Duffy and the Devil By Harve & Margot Zemach

The book Duffy and the Devil by Harve and Margot Zemach would fall under the genre of Folktale.  The reason it is a folktale is because the story has good vs. evil, characters of royalty, contains magic and a happy ending.  This is common for this genre.  In this story the main character Duffy is hired for a job in which she is required to knit and spin clothes for her boss.  Duffy takes the job with out any knowledge of sewing, spinning or knitting.  In order to stay there Duffy calls for the devil and as soon as she does, the devil appears.  The devil makes a deal that he will sew, spin and knit anything she want for the next three years as long as she agrees to go with him at the end of the three years.  He also tells her that the only way that she can get out of her deal is by guessing his name.  Duffy gets away with everything for just about three years and in those three years she ends up marrying her boss and becomes well known aruund town for her sewing, knitting and spinning.  At the end of the three years Duffy confesses her wrong doings to a friend, Miss Jone.  Miss Jone helps Duffy to find out the Devils name and breaks the curse on her forever.  I liked this story and would use it when teaching my students about fairy tale/folk tales.  I would read this story as a class and have the students give me a thumbs up when they thought I read something that clued them in on the genre.

Note: This book is used as one of my Traditional/Folk Literature