All Stories
Browse our complete collection of folk tales, Panchatantra stories, and moral stories from around the world.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Lost Message
A southern African folk tale: the many kinds of ants fail to agree at their council, and the saving message of unity, entrusted to the slow Beetle, never arrives.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Monkey’s Fiddle
A scholarly retelling of the southern African folk tale "The Monkey's Fiddle", in which a poor monkey, falsely condemned for theft by a corrupt animal court, escapes the gallows by playing a charmed fiddle that forces the whole court to dance.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Story Of A Dam
The Story of a Dam is a Khoikhoi folk tale of southern Africa in which veld animals dig a dam against drought, the idle Jackal fouls it and dupes its guard, is caught by a tar-coated Tortoise, and then escapes his sentence by abandoning Lion under a rock. It is the southern African form of the famous tar-baby tale.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Story Of Hare
The Story of Hare is a Xhosa folktale from South Africa. Five careless watchmen die guarding the animals' fat from the monstrous inkalimeva, until the clever hare alone outwits the beast by its own trick - then nearly undoes himself through greed.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Tiger, The Ram, And The Jackal
A Panchatantra tale where a clever jackal's lies to tiger and ram destroy his own plans.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The White Man And Snake
The Khoikhoi fable of a man who frees a snake pinned under a stone, only for the snake to turn on him - until the clever Jackal restores her to the trap by asking her to prove her story. A Cape retelling of tale type ATU 155.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The World’s Reward
The World's Reward is the Cape South African form of the Bremen Town Musicians: seven cast-off old animals join forces, frighten a band of robbers out of their house, and keep it for themselves.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Tink-Tinkje
The southern African folk tale 'Tink-Tinkje', the Cape form of the worldwide 'election of the king of birds' fable, in which the smallest bird wins the crown by cleverly riding unfelt on the soaring vulture's wing.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Anansi and the Pot of Wisdom
The Akan (Ashanti) trickster tale of how Kwaku Anansi the spider tried to hoard all the wisdom of the world in one clay pot - and how his own small son taught him the lesson that scattered wisdom across the whole earth.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Lion’s Whisker
An Amhara wisdom tale from Ethiopia: a young stepmother, desperate to win her grieving stepson's love, is sent by a wise hakim to pluck a whisker from a living lion - and learns that patience, not magic, is the cure.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Why the Sun and Moon Live in the Sky
An Efik pourquoi tale from southern Nigeria: the Sun and his wife the Moon welcome their friend the Water too well, are flooded out of the great house they built, and are driven up to live in the sky forever.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Tortoise and the Baboon
The African Bantu fable of a baboon who invites a tortoise to a feast hung out of reach in a tree, and the tortoise's patient revenge laid across a stretch of fire-blackened ground - the reciprocal-inhospitality story, international tale type ATU 60.