Maria Tatar is a Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures. She teaches Literature for children, Folklore and German Studies at Harward University where she also chairs the Program in Folklore and Mythodology. In her books, including The Hard Facts of the Grimm's Fairy Tales (1987), Off With Their Heads! Fairy Tales and the Culture of Childhood (1992) , The Artificial-Silk Girl (2002), The Classic Fairy Tales (1999), she analyses fairy tales from a sociological point of view for she explores their historical and social origins and the different forms these tales have had over time, their evolution, especially in Anglo-European popular culture, as well as she questions about their psychological dynamics with issues of national identity and gender.

The author of The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales (2002), Secrets Beyond the Door: "Bluebeard" in Folklore, Fiction and Film (2006), The Annotated Brothers Grimm (2004) and The Annotated Hans Christian Andersen (published in 2007), also takes into account the harsher aspects of these stories originally written for adults: incest, murder, infanticide, cannibalism and multilation, and that had been removed or excised after their authors noticed that parents were reading those books to their children.

Furthermore, this leading expert in the field of Literature for Children and Folklore takes examples from some of the best-known fairy tales archetypes and compares them to similar tales from around the world pointing out common topics and themes. In addition, Maria Tatar has analysed skillfully the different versions of a same story at different historical moments and geographical places, and highlighted how the characters have evolutionated according to the different cultures, different societies and eras. On top of that, she has presented unknown versions of the tales from a feminist point of view.

Maria Tatar argues that telling frightening stories with hostiles characters and dark aspects (like death, loss of one parent, anxiety, kids dying at the end of the tales, cruelty and fears) to young children is a way adults use to mistreat and discipline them. She claims that is time to stop casting children as villans, but to help them to understand how to live in a world ruled by adults. For this reason, she explains classics should play a key role in the lives of young readers who definitely love stimulation and visuals and really enjoy fairy tales.