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A tall tale is a funny folk story that uses wild exaggeration and tells it as if it were true. Its hero is larger than life, stronger, faster or bigger than any real person, and often does impossible jobs or explains how a natural feature was made. Many well-known tall tales come from the American frontier, such as the stories of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and John Henry. Readers enjoy them by spotting the exaggerations and by sharing the joke with a teller who keeps a straight face.
Read a Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill story aloud with a serious voice, then stop and ask, "Could that really happen?" Make a two-column chart of what is realistic and what is exaggerated. Then have students write one sentence about their own day as a tall tale, stretching a true detail into something impossible.
Imagine a friend telling you, with a perfectly serious face, that it was so hot yesterday the corn popped right on the stalks. You know that did not happen. You laugh anyway, because the joke is in how big the story got. That is how a tall tale works.
A tall tale is a folk story, first passed along by people telling it out loud. Many of the most famous ones are set on the American frontier of the 1800s. A few heroes, such as Pecos Bill, were made up later by writers who presented them as old folk stories. Their heroes are often workers from logging camps, cattle drives and railroads. Each new teller could make the story a little bigger than the last one.
Tall tales have a few common features. The hero is larger than life. Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack whose blue ox, Babe, is so big that, in many versions, their footprints filled with water and became lakes. Pecos Bill is a cowboy said to have been raised by coyotes, and in one story he rides a tornado. John Henry is a railroad worker who races a steam-powered drill with his hammer, and he wins.
The problems are huge, and the solutions are impossible. Heroes dig rivers, flatten mountains or rope storms. Many tales also explain how something in nature came to be, like a canyon or a lake.
The details are specific and told as if they were true. A teller might give exact numbers or say, "I saw it myself." That serious style makes the exaggeration even funnier.
Some heroes were real people. Davy Crockett was a real frontiersman and congressman, and Johnny Appleseed was a real man named John Chapman who planted apple trees. Storytellers took true facts about their lives and stretched them.
When you read a tall tale, look for the exaggerations and ask what they show about the hero. Is the hero strong, clever, brave or kind? The answer tells you what the people who told the story admired most.
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