The Three Little Pigs
7 min read ages 4 and up
Fairy tales about perseverance
21 tales
Rapunzel
5 min read ages 6 and up
The Ugly Duckling
12 min read ages 5 and up
Pinocchio
15 min read ages 6 and up
The Little Red Hen
7 min read ages 3 and up
The Red Shoes
8 min read ages 8 and up
Sinbad the Sailor
11 min read ages 7 and up
The Snow Queen
16 min read ages 6 and up
Donkey Skin
12 min read ages 6 and up
The Twelve Dancing Princesses
9 min read ages 5 and up
The Six Swans
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Steadfast Tin Soldier
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Wild Swans
16 min read ages 7 and up
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
15 min read ages 7 and up
The Enormous Turnip
2 min read ages 2 and up
Frau Holle
7 min read ages 4 and up
The Seven Ravens
6 min read ages 6 and up
Jorinda and Joringel
6 min read ages 6 and up
The Tortoise and the Hare
2 min read ages 4 and up
The Ant and the Grasshopper
1 min read ages 3 and up
The Crow and the Pitcher
2 min read ages 3 and up
Keeping at it
The Little Red Hen does every job herself. She plants the seed, cuts the wheat with the farmer’s sickle, threshes it and carries the sack to a mill a long way off, all while feeding her chicks, and in the end she eats the bread she worked for.
In The Ant and the Grasshopper perseverance means planning ahead. The ants dry their stored wheat on a winter morning, and when the hungry grasshopper admits he spent the summer singing, they tell him to spend the winter dancing.
In The Six Swans a girl may not speak or laugh for six years while she sews shirts from starwort for her brothers. She stays silent even when she is falsely accused, and the story takes her right to the stake before the swans arrive.
The Steadfast Tin Soldier holds firm through a fall from a third-floor window, a paper boat in the gutter and the belly of a fish. Andersen ends it in a stove, and next morning the maid finds him in the ashes, melted into a little tin heart.