Bedtime stories for kids

Bedtime stories to read aloud at the end of the day: The Princess and the Pea, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Thumbelina, The Ugly Duckling and more.

These tales were picked for the end of the day, so none of them should leave a child wide awake on the last page. Most come from Grimm and Andersen, the rest from storytellers such as Joseph Jacobs, Beatrix Potter and Oscar Wilde.

Each one shows its reading time and age range before you open it. The shortest takes two minutes, for evenings when eyes are already closing. The longer ones suit a night when nobody has to be up early.

All of them are retold for reading aloud, in sentences that can be finished in one breath.