Kindness stories

In The Queen Bee, Simpleton protects an anthill, the ducks and a bees’ nest from his brothers. Later the ants find the scattered pearls, the ducks bring up the key from the lake, and the queen bee picks the right princess.

In Cinderella the bird in the hazel tree helps a girl who stayed good and kind, as her dying mother asked. Our version follows the Grimms, so the stepsisters cut their feet to fit the slipper and the doves blind them. Read it yourself first.

The Golden Goose begins with a shared meal. Dummling offers his ash-cake and sour beer to a little gray man his brothers turned away, and everything that follows, the goose and the line of people stuck to it, comes from that one choice.

Thumbelina is tiny, yet she covers a frozen swallow with a blanket of hay and nurses him all winter without telling anyone. On the day she is to marry the mole, she says goodbye to the sun, hears “Tweet, tweet” over her head, and there he is.