Enchanting pictures will ensure that this favorite tale will have pride of place on every child's bookshelf When Goldilocks wanders too far into the woods, she comes across an empty house, and she's barely across the threshold before she starts to make a mess of things. Goldilocks doesn't mean to do wrong, it just seems to happen that way. Goldilocks and the Three Bears was first published almost two centuries ago, and it was told as a folk tale for a long time before that.