American Fairy Tales is the title of a collection of twelve fantasy stories by L. Frank Baum, published in 1901 by the George M. Hill Company, the firm that issued The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the previous year.

Publisher George M. Hill sold the serialization rights to the twelve stories in AFT to five major newspapers, the Pittsburgh Dispatch, The Boston Post, The Cincinnati Enquirer, the St. Louis Republic, and The Chicago Chronicle.

With ironic or nonsensical morals attached to their ends, their tone is more satirical, glib, and tongue-in-cheek than is usual in children's stories; the serialization in newspapers for adult readers was appropriate for the materials.

Two of the stories, "The Enchanted Types" and "The Dummy That Lived," employ Knooks and Ryls, the fairies that Baum would use in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus the next year, 1902.

(Baum's story "The Runaway Shadows," published in newspapers in June 1901, was intended to be part of the collection, but was dropped prior to publication of the book.