Childrens traditional stories

10 Best Classic Fairy Tales For Your Kids

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” ― Albert Einstein.

Fairy tales often take people to the sweet memory lane of their childhood. The memories of magic, dragons, and evilness getting defeated never fail to bring a smile to our faces. 

Reading or listening to classic tales can help parents bond better with their children and nurture their creativity.

So, if you are looking for the best bedtime stories for your children, this blog will surely help you. Let’s explore some of the fascinating and timeless fairy tales that can bring lots of colors and blooms to your kid’s childhood. 

Cinderella is one of the most popular fairy tales of all time. Its story remains an all-time classic and will remain the same for future generations as well.

Cinderella was a young woman who lived with her wicked stepmother and stepsisters. Thanks to her glass slipper, she found her Prince Charming and escaped her difficult life. 

Cinderella’s story has been adapted in many variations over history. Cinderella’s popular version “The Brother Grimm” was published in 1812. Recently, in 2021, Disney has released a new Cinderella movie with a modern outlook. 

Moral: This story tells kids how they should never stop dreaming despite all the hardships that life presents them with.

Related Reading: Top Reading Apps for Kids: How to Use Screens For Stories 

Beauty and the Beast is a fairy tale that celebrates real royalty. In the story, a spoiled prince turns into a beast and imprisons a beautiful young lady named Belle. It’s only when he learns to love Belle that he becomes the prince again. 

This fairy tale is assumed to be inspired by a real-life couple who lived in France in the 1500s. The man had a condition called hypertrichosis. This condition causes abnormal hair growth on the body. 

So, he was referred to as a wild man and was kept in a cage for a long time. In a surprising turn of events, he married a royal court servant’s daughter, and they had 7 children.

Moral: We should value internal characteristics such as kindness over other superficial or physical qualities. 

Rapunzel is a beautiful and motivational fairy tale. The story shows how a poor couple lost their daughter Rapunzel when they stole fruit from their neighbor’s garden. It also focuses on how the angelic voice of Rapunzel reunites her with her lover. 

Moral: This story gives two bold messages that one should never steal, and evilness never wins. 

Related Reading: Best Children’s Books to Stimulate Kids’ Imagination & Creativity

Snow White is a young princess and is defined by her inherent kindness and pure beauty. In the story, an evil queen spends all her life envying Snow White’s beauty. 

But, in the end, Snow White finds her happiness by marrying the prince. In contrast, the evil queen loses her peace and leads an unhappy life while chasing meaningless physical beauty. 

Moral: This story has an insightful moral — if you lust over physical beauty, you lose your peace in the way. The story also encourages kids to be kind and pure like Snow White. 

A rebellious Red sets off alone to meet her grandmother with instructions to never step off the forest path. But she disobeys the instructions and attracts the attention of the bad wolf. 

Now, what happens next depends on the version you are reading. In the Charles Perrault version, Red gets gobbled up by the wolf. However, across Europe, North America, and many other tellings, she was saved by her hood or a guy with an ax. 

Moral: This fairy tale intends to teach children to follow directions and express their courage at the time of need.  

Jack is a rule-breaker and loves to prank. Once, he traded a family cow for a couple of magic beans in the hope of climbing the beanstalk and reaching the giant’s castle to steal his magic possessions. 

This story will help you teach your naughty little pranksters that no matter how daring you are, one should never cross certain boundaries in life. 

Moral: The story shows that undying greed for more will take away what you already have in your life. 

Related Reading: Learning Styles That Make Learning Easy-Peasy For Kids

Sleeping Beauty is slightly similar to Snow White. The story revolves around a Sleeping Beauty who was cursed by a wicked fairy. Beauty spends all her childhood sleeping, but on her 16th birthday, her prince charming finds her and wakes her up after years of slumber. 

Like other fairy tales, different interpretations of Sleeping Beauty are also available. However, Disney’s Maleficent in the year 2014 achieved the most success. 

Moral: The story shows that growing up has its own hurdles but in the end, love conquers all.

If you want to raise a little animal helper, this is the perfect story for you. Puss is a bold trickster who masquerades as the servant of a nobleman. His tactics bring him fame, fortune, and a wife at a young age. 

The boots in this fairy tale symbolize wealth and wisdom. The story is set back in the 16th century when people used to be barefoot. So, having boots at that time was a significant sign of wealth. 

Moral: The story’s moral is simple — your wisdom can help you win wealth. 

This tale talks about the hunger of the heart and stomach. Hansel and Gretel are abandoned by their stepmother in the forest. Both children can’t resist eating a real gingerbread cottage out of hunger. But they get caught by a cannibal witch who lives there.  

In the end, they shove the witch into the fiery oven to escape. 

Moral: This story will teach your kids how fortunate they are to have food on their plates. It will help them be grateful in life and never have any egos! 

In this story, a frog helps a princess to find her golden ball in the pond and then invites her to live in the castle. It is then that the frog turns into a prince. The storyline of The Frog Prince is quite similar to Beauty and the Beast.

Moral: The story teaches that it’s important to value kindness and goodness over physical beauty. It also tries to convey the importance of keeping our promises.

Related Reading: Best Riddles for Kids of all Grades (With Answers)!

Are you wondering how centuries-old fairy tales can benefit your child in this digital age? Well, no matter how old fairy tales are, they can always make your kid’s childhood happy and memorable.  

Be it The Brothers Grimm or Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, all the classic magic stories can benefit your child in a number of ways:

Storytelling plays a significant role in a child’s development. That is because 95% of the human brain develops by the age of six. Therefore, reading or listening to fairy tales can build imagination and literacy for your child. 

Your child can engage in fantasy land and learn to distinguish the fantasy world from the real world. They can learn to express their thoughts and ideas better. 

Some studies even indicate that storytelling helps to improve vocabulary and confidence among children. 

Through stories, children and even adults can learn how to handle certain problems. Cinderella’s story fits perfectly in this context. It tells how a young woman escapes her difficult life despite her wicked stepmother and stepsisters’ cruelties.  

Stories allow people to step into the character’s shoes and learn how they can easily conquer problems and presents children with an interactive method of learning. This is one of the reasons why SplashLearn creates visually appealing and character-based animated games. 

Sign up & play learning games!

Children connect better with the characters in the stories. This helps them learn from their favorite characters’ life stories. The stories can show children how to believe in goodness amidst problems and anxieties. 

For example, Beauty and the Beast portray how selfishness can turn a prince into a beast. It also shows how beauty and kindness can turn a beast into a prince again. 

Fairy tales can bring cultural flavors into your child’s life. Different versions of stories are available today that can help your children interact with different cultures.  

Fairy tales show that life isn’t perfect. Children discover that bad things happen to everyone. But if you are emotionally resilient, you can overcome all challenges. 

This helps children stay strong during hard times and always believe in the richness of life despite hardships. 

Exposing your child to the world of fantasy can stimulate their imagination. It might amaze you to see how children can give a spin to traditional stories and interpret them into something completely different. 

For instance, the University of Hawai’i conducted a study to evaluate the positive impact of fairy tales on children. In the study, researchers exposed children to different classic stories to understand their impact. 

Interestingly, after listening to Little Red Riding Hood, a seven-year-old boy draws the wolf to the size of an ant. He used his imagination to create a funny interpretation of the bad wolf and show his courage.  

So, when you introduce a story to your child, you are providing them with an opportunity to think and imagine different scenarios. 

Every fairy tale is attached to a moral lesson. Fairy tales often leave us with a strong message, whether it is being good or believing in love or friendship. 

You might have a hard time making your toddler understand where the difference between good and bad lies. But stories like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” can better show to your kids, the consequences of convincing yourself that something was true when it wasn’t.

Through classic fairy tales, parents can bond with their children in a great capacity. They can relive their childhood memories with their kids and build some new memories.

You can forget anything in your life, but you can never forget all the classic fairy tales that you have heard in your childhood. Have you ever thought, why? 

That is mainly because stories capture our interest in a much better way. And once we learn something with an interest, we tend to not forget that information. 

SplashLearn creates learning games to spike and capture kids’ interest. The engaging characters and visuals motivate the little ones to learn. Different mediums like games, worksheets and courses on Math and English can help them remember and retain concepts their entire life. 

Today, you can try SplashLearn with your kids to see how they actually interact with interesting learning mediums. 

Parents, sign up for free!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Which is the oldest fairy tale?

According to some researchers, The Smith And The Devil is the oldest fairy tale. It goes back by 6,000 years to the Bronze Age.

Do all fairy tales have morals?

Yes. Fairy tales are written with a motive to teach a lesson to children via interesting characters and a storyline

How do fairy tales affect child development? 

When children listen to fairy tales often, it affects their imagination and helps them to think about new things. The fairy tales affect the emotional, physical, and mental development of a child. 

Do fairy tales have the truth? 

Fairy tales have been passed down from many generations and cultures. However, today there’s no solid source from where these tales come from, but they have been inspired from somewhere. So, we can say that some fairy tales are adaptations of real-life events. 

Are fairy tales timeless?

Yes. The storyline might have changed in many tales with time, but the central idea has always been the same. 

What is the right time to read fairy tales to your child?

There’s no specific time to read stories to your kids. However, most parents prefer to read stories before bedtime. But you can read them to your child anytime as soon as they turn two.

Classic Short Stories for Kids

This is a collection of famous classical short stories for kids that are available online. We have selected a variety of stories from different authors. The links go directly to the stories where they can be read online. You might also be interested in the poems for kids page.

• "The Lion and the Mouse" by Aesop
  The Lion and the Mouse is a classic Aesop fable. A lion generously spares a mouse it was about to kill. The mouse promise to repay the lion some day.
• "The Three Little Pigs" by Unknown
  This fairy tale originates in England. Three pigs build homes but only one builds a home strong enough to withstand wolf attacks.
• "Hansel and Gretel" by Brothers Grimm
  "Hansel and Gretel" is a classic fairy tale about two abandoned children who encounter a witch in the forest. The witch lures the children in to her home with delicious food but she really intends to eat them.
• "The Princess and the Pea" by Hans Christian Andersen
  This fairy tale from by Hans Christian Andersen tells the story of a special test that can identify a real princess. The sensitivity test involves placing a pea underneath a stack of mattresses.
• "The Ants and the Grasshopper" by Aesop
  This classic Aesop fable is set in late fall. It follows a group of hardworking ants drying out the grain they had stored during the summer. They encounter a grasshopper who foolishly failed to store any food for the winter.
• "How the Camel Got His Hump" by Rudyard Kipling
  This tale from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories tells how the camel, fond of saying "Humph!", got his hump from an encounter with a djinn.
• "A Kidnapped Santa Claus" by L. Frank Baum
  The Land of Oz creator L. Frank Baum wrote this story about deamons that kidnap Santa Claus. Fortunately, Santa Claus has some help completing his toy deliveries.
• "The Snow Image" by Nathaniel Hawthorne
  A brother and sister make a snow girl that comes to life - a snow sister. She is so lifelike that their father insists on bringing the snow girl inside, which is a mistake.
• "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" by Mark Twain
  Mark Twain wrote this short story in 1865. It was included in a short story collection. The story covers jumping frogs, cheating and betting.
• "The Frog Prince" by Brothers Grimm
  This classic Grimm fairy tale follows the story of a talking frog and a spoiled princess.
• "The Reluctant Dragon" by Kenneth Grahame.
  This tale tells the story of a boy who befriends a dragon. The dragon is discovered by the townspeople who send for St. George to slay it. The story was published in Grahame's Dream Days book.
• "The Remarkable Rocket" by Oscar Wilde
  This humorous short story tells the tale of an arrogant and boisterous rocket. The rocket thinks he is remarkable and better than all the other fireworks.
• "The Bundle of Sticks" by Aesop
  There are no animals in this Aesop fable. A father uses the concept of a bundle of sticks to teach the importance of unity and working together to his young sons.
• "The Elves and the Shoemaker" by Brothers Grimm
  This fairy tale tells the story of a group of little elves that help a cobbler make shoes. There are multiple variations and translations of the tale.
• "The Kite That Went to the Moon" by Evelyn Sharp
  The story is part of Evelyn Sharp's short story collection, The Other Side of the Moon. A boy makes a giant kite and his friend draws a moon and stars on it. They are embarrassed when the kite doesn't fly.
• "Snow White" by Brothers Grimm
  The are variations on this fairy tale that was first published in 1812. As many children already know it involves a wicked, vain stepmother queen who is jealous and envious of the King's daughter, Snow White.
• "The Ugly Duckling" by Hans Christian Andersen
  This is a very clever fairy tale invented by Andersen that tells the story of a little bird that does not fit in and is teased by the other birds in the barnyard.
• "The Dog and His Refection" by Aesop
  This Aesop fable teaches the foolishness of greed. A dog looking at his reflection in the water spies a bigger bone than the bone is carrying.
• "The Bogey-Beast" by Flora Annie Steel (retold
  This is an entertaining fairy tale about an optimistic poor, old woman who unknowingly encounters the Bogey-Beast when she finds a perfectly good black pot lying in a ditch.

Children's stories

You are here:
1. Home
2. Stories

Speech diagnostics

Preparation for school

Caring parents start reading to their kids early children's stories , poems and fairy tales. But in order for the baby's speech to become correct, expressive and vivid, just reading children's stories is not enough, it is necessary to learn to retell. According to the stories of teachers, it is retelling that causes the greatest difficulties for children in elementary school.

On this page we have collected for you children's stories that can be retold, and for convenience they are sorted by authors.

If your child finds it difficult to retell, we recommend that you turn to retelling.

E. PERMYAK _{children's stories}

How Masha got big

Hasty knife

First fish

Pichugin Bridge

Someone else's gate

Reliable person

Ah!

How Misha wanted to outsmart his mother

Who?

Pro nose and tongue

The most terrible

Currant Magic colors

Mom and us

Dandelions

Temka

Sharik and Torik

Runaway Raspberry

Red wagon

Sixth Malachi

Deceptive Lake

Fine string

Slavka

Labor light

What hands are for

All colors of the rainbow

First smile

Tale of the big bell

Grandpa's glasses

Grandpa's eyes

Ugly tree

Who grinds flour

Lost threads

About the hasty marten

The ring has no end

Tricky rug

Four brothers

Candle

Noisy Sea

Eternal King

Moon, puddle and thorn. ..

About three hearts

Cast Iron and Steel

Small galoshes

Happy Appliance

Pro two wheels

V.OSEEVA _{children's stories}

Blue leaves

Magic word

Sons

Bad

Good hostess

Good

Three comrades

Magic needle

Offenders

Before the first rain

Biscuits

Revenge

Which is easier?

Who is the boss?

grandma

Just an old lady

Bunny hat

On the ice rink

Watchman

N.NOSOV _{children's stories}

On the hill

Cucumbers

Patch

Steps

Putty

Entertainers

Lollipop

L. VORONKOVA _{children's stories}

What would mother say

Masha the confused

Aniska

Brother Nikolka

Affectionate word

Aniskin's nonsense

Yu. KOVAL _{children's stories}

Grandfather, woman and Alyosha

Nightingales

Sparrow Lake

Piglet

Dick and blueberry

Star ide

Tuzik

Cloudberry

Porcelain bells

White and yellow

Ant king

Gray night

Ice hole

N. PAVLOVA

Kittens

Assistant

Great Miracle

Yellow, white, purple

Living bead

The little mouse got lost

Weed Pupavka

Sly Dandelion

M. PRISHVIN _{children's stories}

Chanterelle bread

Zhurka

Golden Meadow

Forest floors

Talking Rook

Khromka

Inventor

Guys and ducklings

Blue bast shoes

Bear

Moose

Hedgehog

Sip of milk

How Romka crossed the stream

Our garden

Salvation Island

Forest owner

Sun pantry

K. USHINSKY

Four Wishes

Alien testicle

Playing dogs

Morning Rays

Scientist Bear

Eagle and cat

SKREBITSKY

Down

Forest echo

Orphan

Cat Ivanych

Birthday

Thief

Friendship

Chir Chirych

Jack

Ushan

Badger

caring mother

Storks

White coat

Forest Voice

Rare guestForest great-grandfather

Teteruk

Smart Birds

Little Arborist

Hunting Companions

In the winter cold

Pathfinders

V. BIANKI _{children's stories}

Forest newspaper

Orange neck

Sinichkin calendar

Whose nose is better?

Ant Adventures

Mouse Peak

Who sings with what?

Forest cabins

First hunt

Arishka coward

Whose legs are these?

Cuckoo

Owl

Snow Book

Crazy Squirrel

Plover

Chipped barrel

V.DRAGUNSKY _{children's stories}

Girl on the ball

Childhood friend

The secret becomes clear

Enchanted letter

What I love

He is alive and glowing

Must have a sense of humor

One drop kills a horse

Nothing can be changed

From top to bottom, obliquely!

Don't bang, don't bang!

Twenty years under the bed

Big traffic on Sadovaya

Paul's Englishman

Cunning way

Puss in Boots

Death of the spy Gadyukin

Professor of Sour Soup

Main rivers

Green leopards

Amazing day

Exactly 25 kilos

Blue dagger

Glory of Ivan Kozlovsky

Battle at the Clear River

Red balloon in blue sky

Dymka and Anton

Motorcycle steep wall racing

Chicken broth

Third Place Butterfly

Knights

Healthy Thought

Fire in the wing, or a feat in the ice. ..

Where has it been seen, where has it been heard...

Silent Ukrainian night...

M. GORKY

Vorobishko

K.PAUSTOVSKY _{children's stories}

Bunny feet

Badger nose

Rubber boat

Miracle Collection

Thief Cat

Grach in a trolleybus

Disheveled Sparrow

Steel ring

Voronezh summer

Dense Bear

Yellow light

Crushed sugar

Basket with fir cones

Gift

Warm bread

Meshchora side

Snow

buoy worker

V.N.NOVIKOV

Bear, Night and Baby

N. Sladkov

Autumn on the doorstep

Dancer

Non-rumor

Woodpecker

Forest rustles

Bureau of Forest Services

Mysterious Beast

Trial of December

Forest caches

Wonder Planet

Karluha

New voice

Great Titmouse

Serious Bird

Sly Bunny

B. ZHITKOV _{children's stories}

Elephant

Brave duck

Girl Katya

Mongoose

Stray cat

About the monkey

Bear

Evening

How an elephant saved its owner from a tiger

Jackdaw

Wolf

Hunter and dogs

How I caught little men

On the ice floe

White House

Razinya

Smoke

Fire

Flood

Flower

In the mountains

How Sasha scared his mother

Beard

Fire at sea

Courage

Pudya

Herringbone mug

E. USPENSKY _{children's stories}

Uncle Fedor, dog and cat

Winter in Prostokvashino

Crocodile Gena and his friends

About Vera and Anfisa

Games for the development of speech

Early development

For classes

Problems of speech

Contemporary children's stories • Arzamas

You have Javascript disabled. Please change your browser settings.

Children's room ArzamasMaterials

Materials

Arzamas for classes with schoolchildren! A selection of materials for teachers and parents

Everything you can do in an online lesson or just for fun

Cartoons are winners of festivals. Part 2

Tales, parables, experiments and absurdity

Guide to Yasnaya Polyana

Leo Tolstoy's favorite bench, greenhouse, stable and other places of the writer's estate worth seeing with children boys named Petya

Migrants: how to fight for their rights with the help of music

Hip-hop, carnival, talking drums and other non-obvious ways

Old records: fairy tales of the peoples of the world

We listen and analyze Japanese, Italian, Scandinavian and Russian fairy tales

Video: The ISS commander asks the scientist about space

Lecture at an altitude of 400 kilometers

How to make a film

Film of horror, comedy and melodrama at home

The most unusual

animation techniques

VR, sunbeams, jelly and spice cartoons

Play the world's percussion instruments

Learn how the gong, marimba and drum work and build your own orchestra

How to put a performance

shadows, reading and other home performance options for children

Soviet puzzles

solve children's puzzles of the 1920-70s

22 Cartoon for the smallest

What if you are not six

From "The Wild Dog Dingo" to "Timur and his team"

What you need to know about the main Soviet books for children and teenagers

A guide to children's poetry of the 20th century

From Agnia Barto to Mikhail Yasnov: children's poems in Russian

10 books by artists

The pages of tracing paper are Milanese fog, and the binding is the border between reality and fantasy

How to choose a modern children's book

“Like Pippi, only about love”: explaining new books through old ones

Verbal games

"Hat", "telegrams", "MPS" and other old and new games

Games from classic books

What the heroes of Nabokov, Lindgren and Milne play

Plasticine animation: Russian school

From "Plasticine Crow" to plasticine "Sausage"

Cartoons - winners of festivals

"Brave Mom", "My Strange Grandfather", "A Very Lonely Rooster" and others

Non-fiction for children

How the heart beats whale, what's inside the rocket and who plays the didgeridoo - 60 books about the world around

Guide to foreign popular music

200 artists, 20 genres and 1000 songs that will help you understand the music of the 1950s-2000s

Cartoons based on poems

Poems by Chukovsky, Kharms, Gippius and Yasnov in Russian animation

Home games

Shadow theater, crafts and paper dolls from children's books and magazines of the 19th–20th centuries

Books for the smallest

Books for the smallest

0 to 5: read, look at, learn

Puppet animation: Russian school

Amorous Crow, Imp No. 13, Lyolya and Minka and other old and new cartoons

Clever coloring books

Museums and libraries offer to paint their collections

Reprints and reprints of children's books

Favorite fairy tales, stories and magazines of the last century, which can be bought again

What can be heard in classical music by ice voices

cuckoos and night forest sounds in great compositions of the 18th–20th centuries

Soviet educational cartoons

Archimedes, dinosaurs, Antarctica and space — popular science cartoons in the USSR

Logic puzzles

Solve a wise men's dispute, make a bird out of a shirt and count kittens correctly

Modern children's stories

The best short stories about grandmothers, cats, spies and knights

why you can't lie down on the edge. Bonus: 5 lullabies by Naadya

Musical fairy tales

How Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev work with the plots of children's fairy tales

Armenian School of Animation

The most rebellious cartoons of the Soviet Union

Dina Goder’s collection of cartoons

The program director of the Big Cartoon Festival advises what to watch with a child

Cartoons about art

How to tell children about art

40 riddles about everything in the world

What burns without fire and who has a sieve in his nose: riddles from "Chizh", "Hedgehog" and books by Marshak and Chukovsky

Yard games

Traffic light, Shtander, Ring and other games for a large company

Poems that are interesting to learn by heart

What to choose if you were asked to learn a poem about mother, New Year or autumn

Old audio performances for children

"Ole Lukoye", "The Gray Sheika", "Cinderella" and other interesting Soviet recordings

Cartoons with classical music

How animation works with the music of Tchaikovsky, Verdi and Glass

How children's counting rhymes work

"Ene, bene, raba, kvanter, manter, toad": what does it all mean

Short stories are one of the favorite genres for children: easy to read and follow the plot. Arzamas chose the best collections of stories about everything in the world: grandmothers, losers, knights, spies, cats and hippos

Author Lisa Birger

Sylvia Vanden Heyde. Fox and Bunny

0+. Translator Irina Trofimova. "Scooter". M., 2017

Stories about Fox and Bunny have been published in Holland since 1998: there are more than twenty books in total, five have been translated into Russian. As befits a book from the "I Read It Myself" series, here are very simple texts with short clear sentences, feasible for those who are just getting used to independent reading. Tae Tung Kin's illustrations are built into stories, they are placed several times on a page, and this creates the illusion of movement. And the book tells about the most important thing - about love and friendship. The fox loves the Bunny (and she is the Fox), the Owl loves the Pip-Pip chick, and no matter how difficult it is for them all sometimes with each other, love conquers everything.

Gudrun Mebs. "'Grandma!' Frieder shouts"

0+. Translator Vera Komarova. "Scooter". M., 2017

The German Gudrun Mebs became an actress at the age of 17, traveled all over the world with her theater troupe and successfully starred in television series until the age of forty, and in the 80s she began to write fairy tales and philosophical stories for children and became a popular writer. Her first book about Grandma and Frieder came out in 1984, her fourth in 2010, and all four are illustrated by Susanne Rotraut Berner, another great children's author. The main characters are the five-year-old tomboy Frieder and his incredibly patient grandmother. Each story is arranged in the same way: Frieder starts something, and then the grandmother deals with his ideas cheerfully and wisely. He wants to learn how to write - she makes him letters from dough, he wants to go on a picnic in the rain - she has a picnic at the bus stop. And this is again about love - more precisely, about the science of listening to and understanding another.

Bernard Friot. Impatient Stories

6+. Translator Asya Petrova. "Compass Guide". M., 2013

Before becoming a writer and publisher of children's books, the Frenchman Bernard Friaud worked at school for a long time and invented short stories with his students - they form the basis of five collections of Impatient Stories. Brief, absurd and meaningless at first glance, these stories represent the world through the eyes of a child, when everything needs to be turned upside down, rethought, and then, maybe, everything will become much better. Like in the story about the teacher who yelled so much at the children (“Quiet!”) that the students caught her, put her in a jar and calmly redid all her affairs while she, sitting in the jar, opened her mouth with indignation. Or about the boy who tidied up his room so well that he cleaned himself too, and his mother had to scatter everything back to find her son. A good reminder that the world is not always comprehended and measured by parental rules and that sometimes it can be understood only by turning it inside out.

Christine Nöstlinger. "Stories about Franz"

0+. Translator Vera Komarova. "Compass Guide". M., 2017

Franz grows from book to book: in the first collection he is six, in the final, nineteenth, he is already nine. Each story (there are usually three or four of them in a book, ten pages each) is some recognizable situation from a child’s life, whether it’s waiting for gifts for Christmas or a trip to a summer camp, the first meeting with injustice or a sick stomach. As always in such stories with a sequel, it is very important what the hero is like. Franz is a charming, slightly unlucky, not at all ideal child who can both lie and be stupid. And that is why the stories about him are truly funny and instructive. Whatever Franz arranges, in whatever situation he finds himself, he will be supported by a large family and true friends, so here we are talking not only about growing up, but also about the fact that a small child should not be alone.

Jurg Schubiger. "Where does the sea lie?"

6+. Translator Elena Leenson. "Scooter". M., 2013

Something strange or nothing happens in the funny absurdist stories of the German writer Jürg Schubiger. The pigs ask the cows how they can get to the sea. The girl got caught in the rain on a bridge in Hamburg and thought: she herself got wet, but her name remained dry. The boy put on his pants and changed his mind because he was tired. The cow is in love with sorrel. The sun and the moon created the world so that there was a place to direct the rays. All these stories have one important feature in common: they invariably provoke mental effort, the need to feel someone else's sadness or love, to look at the world around, because in fact they are still real philosophical parables.

Anastasia Orlova. "I love walking on clouds"

6+. "Egmont". M., 2018

The wonderful children's poetess Anastasia Orlova wrote a series of short stories no longer than her cheerful children's poems. Orlova has a wonderful ability to turn any everyday things into a big event. Mom puts on makeup - an event, clouds are reflected in a puddle - an event, with my mother by the hand I went for a walk, stumbled and fell on the street - also a whole thing. He drank orange juice - there was a swamp in his stomach, there was a rustle in his ears - there the janitor was sweeping the leaves with a broom. Everything around the child turns out to be alive and important, even if only socks.

Socks

I am sitting in the morning, getting dressed. I take yesterday's socks, but they are dirty. And they smell somehow impolite - yesterday's puddle. And I rather went to wash my socks with strawberry soap.

Marie-Aude Muray. "Dutch without problems"

6+. Translator Marina Kadetova. "Scooter". M., 2014

Frenchwoman Marie-Aude Murail wrote her first stories for children at the turn of the 19th90s, and today in France she is already known as the author of several dozen books. Her teenage novels "Umnik", "Oh, boy!" were published in Russian. and Miss Charity. "Dutch Without Problems" is a collection of three of her early stories. Short but very inspiring. In one, a boy who is sent to learn German for the summer invents his own language and speaks it well; in the second, two girls compare New Year's gifts; in the third, a father stays with his four sons for the weekend and does not cope very well with them. Everything seems to be simple, but each situation is in the treasury of the writer's favorite topic: all of us - both adults and children - need to learn to talk to each other, come up with the "Dutch" language again and again, which will help overcome misunderstanding.

Xenia Dragunskaya. "Angels and Pioneers"

12+. "Time". M., 2018

The new book by Ksenia Dragunskaya very well conveys the confusion of Orthodoxy, patriotism and fear of the Unified State Examination, which the modern school has become. But the main thing is not how funny, with her signature absurdist humor, Dragunskaya plays up all this modern childhood life, but her willingness to offer an alternative - a family where they don’t scold for grades, robot schoolchildren ready to stand up for classmates, a grandfather who turns into watchdog to keep evil teachers out of the doorstep, the school where the writer teaches literature, and the sea captain teaches geography.

Maria Bershadskaya. "Big Little Girl"

0+. "Compass Guide". M., 2018

A happy example of a domestic book series for children - 12 stories (each story is a separate lavishly illustrated booklet) about the girl Zhenya, the most ordinary, but so tall that her mother has to stand on a stool to braid her pigtail. The metaphor here is understandable: maybe Zhenya looks quite big, but she is still growing inside, and Bershadskaya's stories are dedicated to this inner growth. 12 books is a year from Zhenya's life. She bakes dad a birthday cake, walks her dog, goes to the village, waits for the New Year: the simplest things always turn into funny adventures. Or thoughts, including about very difficult things: is it possible to think about a holiday when grandfather is sick? Which way to roam if you are completely lost in the forest? And what if someone left a dog on the street?

Stanislav Vostokov. "Don't feed or tease!"

6+. "Egmont". M., 2017

Stanislav Vostokov is a very talented writer and a true animal lover. He worked at the Moscow and Tashkent zoos, as well as at the Durrell Nature Conservation Center on the island of Jersey, participated in the construction of a rehabilitation center for gibbons in Cambodia ... But the point is not in a romantic biography, but in that special ironic-love intonation with which he writes his stories about animals and people. "Don't feed or tease!" - his most famous book, the stories of a Moscow Zoo attendant: short portraits, sketches of monkeys and capybaras, as well as hippos, which are not.

Where's the hippopotamus?

Visitors often ask:
— And where is your hippopotamus? Why is there no hippopotamus?
And there is no hippopotamus. And you begin to feel very uncomfortable about such an omission, as if you didn’t bring a hippopotamus from Africa.
Visitors shake their heads reproachfully:
- What are you looking at here if there is no hippopotamus? Not for monkeys.
— Why not monkeys? - you answer. — Just for monkeys. After all, some of them are also from Africa. And you probably saw a hippopotamus there!

Bart Muyart. "Brothers"

12+. Translator Irina Mikhailova. "Scooter". M., 2017

In Belgium, Bart Muyart is one of the most famous writers, author of more than forty books, winner of numerous awards. And so far only his Brothers, a collection of stories about childhood in Bruges in the late 1960s, have been translated into Russian. There are seven brothers, and they are tirelessly interested in everything in a row. Is it true that whistling in your ear is the echo of dancing on your future grave? How does the pipe help dad think? Is it possible to get sick if you put a bulb in your armpit? And did the king himself really drive in the royal car to give silver spoons to the youngest of the brothers? Time flows slowly in these stories, so that both the characters and the reader can look at the world around and find that everything in it is worth a separate story and full of meaning.

Viktor Lunin. "My Beast"

12+. "Bering". M., 2015

Victor Lunin - poet, translator and writer, holder of the Andersen diploma for translations of children's poetry, author of the story "The Adventures of Butter Liza". “My Animal” are stories about animals that the author met at different moments in his life: an elk in the forest, a cat in the kitchen, a nightingale in the country - unpretentious, like drinking stories or family anecdotes. A simple, but surprisingly pleasant book in its unpretentiousness.

Asya Petrova. "Wolves on Parachutes"

12+. "Black River". St. Petersburg, 2017

Writing for teenagers is much more difficult than for middle schoolers, to whom most modern children's stories are addressed. Including because teenagers instantly and acutely feel falsehood. In this collection by Asya Petrova, honesty is almost overwhelming. The experiences of the maturing hero are conveyed with the utmost accuracy: these are stories about how you are afraid of death, how fantasies become larger than life, how difficult it is to trust another, how joy is inseparable from suffering, and it is always easier to believe in tragedy than in happiness. And in each story there is not insipid morality, but a life lesson, something that makes it possible to move on.

Artur Givargizov. "Control dictation and ancient Greek tragedy"

6+. Melik-Pashayev. M., 2017

In fact, it is absolutely impossible to choose the best of Givargizov's books, because all of them are a cure for boredom and sadness. And the point is not only that they are easy to read and very funny (you start laughing from the very first pages). The reader, tormented by school, work, parents and other walking on the string, is here to arrange a real holiday of disobedience. This is liberating laughter, not knowing hierarchies, not striving for education and some kind of "pedagogy", which is already abundant everywhere. It is not surprising that Givargizov is especially good at books about the school: “Notes of an outstanding loser”, “Control dictation and an ancient Greek tragedy”, “Airplane flight according to notes”, “How the director of the school disappeared”. But kings and generals, and pirates, and pensioners, he also turns out to be very charming, not without weaknesses and with passions.

Irina Zartaiskaya. "The Best Age"

6+. "Egmont". M., 2018

Irina Zartaiskaya's stories are ideal for parents who are worried about the pedagogical safety of children's reading: no hooligans go here, and the losers are somehow unconvincing, too cute. In fact, the author's school life is not so interesting, in her stories the main thing is the family. The most traditional: mom is always in the kitchen, and dad is at work. And in this immutability of all positions one can see the guarantee of the constancy of the world. Now you can play linguistic games in it (what if instead of breakfast there is today or yesterday?), argue with puddles and go to school in tights and T-shirts, because the content is more important than the form.

Mikhail Yesenovsky. "Main Spy Question"

0+. "Egmont". M., 2017

Writer and poet Mikhail Yesenovsky continued the absurdist tradition of Russian literature, using it for almost therapeutic purposes. In the "Main Spy Question", a very brave boy Yura enters into wonderfully funny dialogues with things that he is afraid of: a crocodile under the bed, a skeleton behind the curtain, a grandfather's portrait on the wall. And, of course, with the spy who tortures Yura with the main spy question: "Who do you love more - mom or dad?" Of course, laughter conquers fear, just like in the continuation of Tasty Yura, where the hero has his absurdist conversations with a fox and a jerboa who are going to eat him. And in "Angina Marina" Yura all the time gets sick with something, and even in rhyme:

"Sickly Yura does not breathe with health: he does not walk during the day, and does not sleep at night, and does not hear with his nose, and does not breathe with his ear, and shoots in the heel, and his neck creaks. "

Nikolai Nazarkin. "Emerald fish. Mandarin Islands

6+. "Egmont". M., 2018

The subtitle of the book is "Ward Stories": these are stories about children for whom the hospital has become everyday life. The book is partly autobiographical: Nazarkin grew up with a diagnosis of hemophilia and was in the hospital much more often than at school. The inhabitants of the chambers dream of fishing, begging each other for sausages, exchanging toys, weaving fish from filters for droppers, and the real trouble here is when brilliant green disappeared from the chamber and the fish from the filters cannot be painted emerald green. Nazarkin does not embellish hospital life, namely that he does not see tragedy in it. More precisely, he is not interested in tragedy: everyday droppers, ECG, rounds of doctors and waiting for parcels from home become only the background for a strong boyish friendship. It’s just that these boys are real knights, and “a knight must look his fate in the eye. ”

Sergei Georgiev. Lilac Hippo Tamer

0+. "Egmont". M., 2017

For many happy years in children's literature, the writer Sergei Georgiev has polished his stories to absolute brevity. Some literally consist of one line: "Remember: a horse in apples is not a culinary recipe." And not only linguistic virtuosity is impressive, but the ability to create a three-dimensional picture with one movement. A few phrases - and you see a fifth grader meowing in a music lesson, or a third grader looking at a chocolate candy under a magnifying glass to make it bigger. These stories can be told like jokes, but their main task is to make the gears of even the laziest fantasy turn rapidly.

Oleg Kurguzov. "Our cat is an alien"

0+. "Egmont". M., 2017

For his first book of short stories, The Sun on the Ceiling. Stories of a Little Boy”, published in 1997, Oleg Kurguzov received the Janusz Korczak International Prize. From the late 1980s, he was the editor of children's publications: from the magazine "Tram" to the newspaper "Little Cart" invented by him. In 2003, his last book, Our Cat Is an Alien, was published, and in 2004 Kurguzov passed away. And what a pity that he did not live to see the current flourishing of children's literature! "Our Cat Is an Alien" is a book about a family in which everything is unusual: a father flies and crawls with his son, a goat turns into a dog, and a horse comes to visit for cleaning. And also a book about love, because this strange family, together with the cat, is an example of complete harmony.

Sergei Makhotin. Grunt Virus

6+. "Detgiz". M., 2014

Sergey Makhotin - author of novels, poems, short stories, historical novels - in 2011 won the Korney Chukovsky Prize "for outstanding creative achievements in Russian children's literature." The Grunt Virus itself received the Scarlet Sails Award and the Andersen International Diploma, and yet finding this book is not at all easy - but definitely worth it. "Grumbling Virus" is the stories of the inhabitants of one house, inspired, according to the author, by his childhood in St. Petersburg. The stories in the collection are both fabulous - for example, about a hairdresser who bewitched a girl's pigtails, so that whoever pulls them immediately decreases - and piercingly realistic. For example, about two classmates who were sent to visit a third one, but it turned out that he did not get sick, but went to Boston, and left a grandmother, a skinny cat on a branch outside the window, and a dreary feeling of broken conversations. Makhotin is better than many at showing that life can be both surprisingly easy and strangely sad at the same time.

Alexander Blinov. "The House That Went"

12+. "Scooter". M., 2018

Alexander Blinov is a graphic artist, architect and aircraft designer who started writing stories for children just a few years ago. Blinov already has six wonderful books, and in all of them - be it fairy tales, like in The Moon Who Loved Eclairs, or autobiographical stories, like in Pure Lies - some incredible liberty is felt.

---

Learn more

• 
  Reading test for elementary students
• 
  Abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz song lyrics
• 
  Number order activities
• 
  Who is chicken little
• 
  Can't read or write
• 
  Kids learn writing
• 
  Alphabet phonic sounds
• 
  Hands on preschool math activities
• 
  Fun 1st grade math
• 
  Words that rhymes with mouse
• 
  Humpty dumpty head