Genres:

Proverbs:  Proverbs are moral sayings ; they are "the most highly condensed commentary on human folly or wisdom."  Proverbs are very short, often only one sentence or line; proverbs have two parts, a cause or condition and a result : an apple a day / keeps the doctor away ; you can lead a horse to water / but you cannot make him drink; a penny saved / is a penny earned.  Proverbs with two parts often show contrast: laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.  Two separate proverbs may take two opposing points of view: absence makes the heart grow fonder; out of sight, out of mind.  Thirty years ago, traditional proverbs were often used in speaking, and children learned them automatically from hearing adults say them; today they are not used nearly as often, and many children do not know the traditional forms.

Fables:  Brief stories which take abstract ideas of good and bad, wisdom and foolishness, and make them concrete.  Characteristics of a true fable (some stories that are called fables do not fit all of these, however):  Characters are animals, or occasionally inanimate objects, which behave like human beings.  Characters are flat, and stand for one human trait.  Plot is very brief, with one incident.  The story teaches a lesson, which may or many not be expressed in a proverb or maxim.

Myths:  mythology is a related body of stories which make up the official beliefs or explanations of a religious system; they attempt to explain the beginning of the world, the reasons for various natural phenomena, the relationships among the gods and among gods and men, the origins of civilization and religion, and the ultimate end of things.  Once myths are written down, they tend to retain a fixed form, and do not develop further.  Mythological systems in an early form of development are very much like folktales and include many stories which uses personification; most American Indian and African myths are at this stage.  Gradually these personified animals and impersonal forces became gods, and complex groups of stories grew up about them. The gods had superhuman power but often were very human in form and in behavior; they came to personify abstract virtues and forces such as love (Venus or Aphrodite), the family (Juno or Hera), wisdom (Minerva or Athena), and war (Mars or Ares).  The animals and natural objects which were once themselves worshipped became symbols of the gods: a thunderbolt (Zeus or Jupiter), the sun (Apollo), the owl (Minerva or Athena).

Legends and epics:  Legends and epics are stories of human heroes; the stories may have gods as characters, but the main characters are human beings.  There is no clear distinction between legends and epics, but both are hero tales about men (very seldom women) who have accomplished great and impossible feats.  Legend is the general name for hero tales; it may be one tale or a series of related tales; legends probably had some original basis in fact. (Tales of most of the Greek heroes are called legends, rather than epics, and are usually published with the Greek myths.  An epic is usually considered to be a large cycle of stories about a hero; they are often told originally in poetry, and are strongly national in character; the heroes embody the ideals most desired by the particular society, and the stories present the moral code of the country and the time.

Folklore:  Although every culture has tales of exaggeration, the type known as "tall tale" is typically American. (It is not religious in nature.) (Ex.: John Henry).  Characteristics of a tall tale:  It is about a character who is larger and stronger than life, who embodies an area of our country and an occupation common to that region (Paul Bunyan, a logger from the Midwest;  Tall tales are sometimes called "folklore" because they were not originally oral (Paul Bunyan is said to have begun as an advertisement for a logging company), but they are now considered as legendary characters.

Science-fiction:  Science fiction is a type of fiction that is based on either actual or imagined discoveries of science.  It is distinguished from other tales of fantasy or the supernatural because science fiction is somewhat grounded in science and has philosophical and sociological implications.  Every type of science fiction has a motif of "What if...", "If only..." or "If this goes on..." and many include a combination of these.  Science fiction is an excellent tool for investigating the results of human acts and inventions.  Science fiction was actually created during a time of a lot of inventions and influential human acts in the industrial revolution.