Bedtime stories

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.

A bedtime tale has a different job from the rest. It should end quietly and leave nobody wide awake on the last page. These were picked for the end of the day, mostly from Grimm and Andersen, with 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 are for a Friday with no early start.

All of them are retold for reading aloud: the sentences finish in one breath and the names do not trip a tired voice.