All Ages
Timeless stories the whole family can enjoy together. No age limit on great storytelling.
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
Baba Yaga
A canonical Russian wonder-tale from Afanasyev (tales 102-103, Narodnye russkie skazki, 1855-63; English re-telling Blumenthal 1903). Two orphan twins, sent into the forest by a wicked stepmother, find Baba Yaga the witch in her hut on chicken legs. They are saved by the small kindnesses they have given to mice, a hungry cat, forest birds, a rusty gate and a wounded birch tree; the cats gift of a towel and a comb becomes a river and a dark forest behind them in the magic flight. ATU 480 fused with ATU 313H*. With scholarly attribution to Propp, Johns, Hubbs and Forrester.
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
Woe Bogotir
A Russian peasant folk tale of two brothers — one rich, one poor — and how the poor one outwits Woe (Gore), the gaunt grey personification of Misfortune who has come to live in his house. Translated by Verra Xenophontovna Kalamatiano de Blumenthal in Folk Tales from the Russian (1903) from Afanasyev's Narodnye russkie skazki. ATU 735A 'Bad Luck Imprisoned.'
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
Ivanoushka The Simpleton
Ivanoushka The Simpleton: [Illustration] In a kingdom far away from our country, there was a town over which ruled the Tsar Pea with his Tsaritza Carrot.
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
The Language Of The Birds
The Language Of The Birds: [Illustration] Somewhere in a town in holy Russia, there lived a rich merchant with his wife. He had an only son, a dear, bright
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
Seven Simeons
Seven Simeons: [Illustration] In an empire, in a country beyond many seas and islands, beyond high mountains, beyond large rivers, upon a level expanse, as if
Russian Folk Tales
All Ages
The Tsarevna Frog
The Tsarevna Frog: [Illustration] In an old, old Russian tsarstvo, I do not know when, there lived a sovereign prince with the princess his wife. They had
Arabian Nights
All Ages
The Story of the Slave Kafur
An enslaved boy in the Arabian Nights tells one lie a year. The year his lie convinces a whole household their master is dead, and the master that his household is dead, a city is thrown into mourning over corpses that never existed - a comic, unsettling parable on the runaway speed of a falsehood.
Arabian Nights
All Ages
The Story of Ghanim ibn Ayyub, the Slave of Love
Locked out of Baghdad at nightfall, the young Damascus merchant Ghanim finds a living woman sealed in a chest among the tombs - and loves her so honourably he will not touch her. One of the great romances of the Arabian Nights.
Arabian Nights
All Ages
The Barber’s Story of His Fifth Brother
The barber's fifth brother, Al-Nashshar, invested his whole inheritance in glassware and, lost in a daydream of the fortune it would bring, kicked over the tray and shattered everything - the Arabian Nights tale that gave English the word 'Alnaschar'.
Arabian Nights
All Ages
The Barber’s Story of Himself
The comic Arabian Nights tale of the self-styled Silent Barber - the busybody who climbs uninvited into a stranger's boat, lands in chains before the Caliph, and still cannot hear how he sounds.
Arabian Nights
All Ages
The Tale of the Three Apples
The Tale of the Three Apples from the Arabian Nights - one of the earliest murder mysteries ever told. A locked chest pulled from the Tigris, a three-day deadline, and a husband undone by his own haste.
Japanese Folk Tales
All Ages
An Old Chinese Story
An Old Chinese Story: Long, long ago there lived a great Chinese Empress who succeeded her brother the Emperor Fuki. It was the age of giants, and the Empress