Little Red Riding Hood
5 min read ages 4 and up
German tales
38 tales
Cinderella
9 min read ages 6 and up
Rapunzel
5 min read ages 6 and up
Sleeping Beauty
5 min read ages 4 and up
Snow White
11 min read ages 7 and up
Rumpelstiltskin
4 min read ages 6 and up
Hansel and Gretel
10 min read ages 5 and up
The Golden Goose
10 min read ages 5 and up
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
5 min read ages 7 and up
The Elves and the Shoemaker
4 min read ages 3 and up
The Frog Prince
5 min read ages 4 and up
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
9 min read ages 5 and up
The Bremen Town Musicians
7 min read ages 4 and up
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King
16 min read ages 7 and up
The Six Swans
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Juniper Tree
11 min read ages 8 and up
Snow-White and Rose-Red
14 min read ages 5 and up
The Fisherman and His Wife
10 min read ages 5 and up
The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats
4 min read ages 4 and up
Brother and Sister
8 min read ages 6 and up
The Brave Little Tailor
12 min read ages 5 and up
Iron Hans
11 min read ages 6 and up
Hans My Hedgehog
7 min read ages 6 and up
Frau Holle
7 min read ages 4 and up
Hans in Luck
7 min read ages 4 and up
The Queen Bee
5 min read ages 5 and up
The Seven Ravens
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Magic Porridge Pot
2 min read ages 3 and up
The Golden Bird
10 min read ages 6 and up
King Thrushbeard
9 min read ages 5 and up
Cat and Mouse in Partnership
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Hare and the Hedgehog
7 min read ages 5 and up
Jorinda and Joringel
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Three Spinners
5 min read ages 5 and up
Star Money
3 min read ages 4 and up
The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs
9 min read ages 6 and up
The Wishing Table
11 min read ages 5 and up
The Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was
12 min read ages 7 and up
The Grimms, Hoffmann and their tales
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected tales in and around Kassel and published them as Kinder- und Hausmärchen, the first volume in 1812 and the second in 1815. Many came from Dorothea Viehmann, who lived in Niederzwehren, a village just outside Kassel.
That collection holds Snow White, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin. It also holds tales that are much less well known outside Germany, among them The Queen Bee, Iron Hans, Jorinda and Joringel and King Thrushbeard, and they are here as well.
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King belongs here too, though no collector wrote it down. E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote it himself and published it in 1816, a year after the second Grimm volume. It takes a good quarter of an hour to read, so it suits older children.
For the youngest listeners there are short tales like Star Money and The Magic Porridge Pot. School-age children may prefer The Brave Little Tailor. Each tale is retold in modern English from an old public-domain edition and is free to read.