Ages 9-12
Stories suggested for ages 9–12, with longer journeys, competing motives and difficult choices. Some contain frightening scenes or violence described in the page’s guidance. These age suggestions support selection and discussion; they do not make every traditional story equally suitable for every reader.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Jack and His Comrades
Poor Jack sets off to seek his fortune and rescues a donkey, a dog, a cat and a cock, and together the five comrades rout a gang of robbers.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How Cormac Mac Art Went to Faery
High King Cormac trades his family for a silver branch whose music ends all sorrow, then follows them into a strange land of wonders to win them back.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Guleesh
Guleesh rides with the fairy host to France to steal a princess on her wedding night, outwits the fairies, then must find a way to give her back her voice.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Elidore
A boy runs away from his strict monk teachers and is led through a cave into a sunless land of little people, until greed for a golden ball ends it all.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Dream of Owen O’Mulready
Owen O’Mulready has never had a dream, so his master tells him to sleep on the hearth, and that night he sets off for America on the back of a crane.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Connla and the Fairy Maiden
An invisible fairy maiden calls Prince Connla away to the Plain of Pleasure, and even the king’s Druid cannot break the longing she leaves behind.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Beth Gellert
Prince Llewelyn comes home to find his faithful greyhound Gellert covered in blood and his baby’s cradle overturned, and he acts before he knows the truth.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Why Tigers Never Attack Men Unless They Are Provoked
A hunter and a tiger become friends and visit each other’s homes, until a hidden shot makes the tiger wonder whether his friend betrayed him.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Why the Moon and the Stars Receive Their Light from the Sun
Captured by a fire-breathing dragon, Kweku Tsin plans a rope-ladder escape to the sky using rice, bones and a magic fiddle, and becomes the sun.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Why Spiders Are Always Found in the Corners of Ceilings
Egya Anansi sends his family away so he can secretly eat the whole harvest, until a sticky rubber-man set in the fields catches the thief at last.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Tit for Tat
Anansi tracks his son to a secret hunting ground and steals it, so Kweku Tsin hangs a nodding, jingling little image in the path to win the meat back.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Thunder and Anansi
Starving Anansi dives into the sea and wins a magic food-pot from Thunder, but his secret greed earns him a very different gift the second time.