All Stories
Browse our complete collection of folk tales, Panchatantra stories, and moral stories from around the world.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
Abiyoyo: The Monster and the Boy
Abiyoyo: The Monster and the Boy: In a small South African village nestled at the edge of the high veld, where grasslands stretched endlessly toward a horizon
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Hare and the Hyena
An East African Swahili trickster tale: during a famine the clever hare Sungura outwits the greedy hyena Fisi, eating their shared honey-store under cover of invented naming-feasts. Tale type ATU 15.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
The Girl Who Could Not Be Eaten
The Zulu tale of Untombinde, a king's proud daughter, and the swallowing monster of the haunted pool - who devours a whole nation and cannot keep a single soul down.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How the Leopard Got His Spots
The canonical story of how the leopard got his spots: Rudyard Kipling's pourquoi tale from Just So Stories (1902), retold with full scholarly attribution.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Clever Tortoise and the Elephant
The clever tortoise tricks a boastful elephant and a proud hippopotamus into a tug-of-war against each other - a classic West African trickster tale of wit over strength.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Girl and the River Spirit
The Girl and the River Spirit — a Yoruba folk tale of Nigeria in which the devoted girl Adeola crosses a dangerous river and is tested by the river goddess Osun through three trials of kindness, honesty and love.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears
Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears: In the ancient days of West Africa, when all the creatures lived in harmony and spoke to one another with respect, a
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Calabash Children
A traditional Chaga folk tale from Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania: a lonely widow grows children from calabash gourds, then loses them to one careless, cruel word.
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.
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 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 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.