FOLK TALES AND FAIRY TALES: WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
The answer to that is: not much. I could write a book on what makes a folk tale a folk tale or a fairy tale a fairy tale, but I won't do that (lucky you!). Some experts say that fairy tales are simply a sub-genre of folk tales and are different only in that they involve magic and/or fantastic creatures. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but without more instruction about the structure and elements of each story, it will do for now. There is more to know about the structure of these stories, but if I teach you everything now, you'll have nothing left to learn in high school, and that would be a bad thing!
Folk tales:
To be a true folk tale, a story must have its origins in what we call the oral tradition. This means the story was first passed down orally by storytellers. Along the way it may have had things added or subtracted as each storyteller made it his or her own.
Fairy tales:
Surprise! Fairy tales often don't have any fairies in them at all. In terms of the kinds of human characters the stories are peopled with or the structure of the stories themselves, there isn't much difference between folk tales and fairy tales. But the presence of witches, dragons, trolls, magic spells, or other magical elements help distinguish fairy tales from folk tales.