Friendship & Loyalty
Companions share food, knowledge, shelter and danger in these stories, while betrayal and unequal obligations can test their relationships. Look at how help moves between characters: who gives it, who receives it and who is forgotten when the reward arrives. Friendship is a subject to explore here, not a guarantee that every companion acts well.
Celtic Folk Tales
Andrew Coffey
Lost on a stormy night, Andrew Coffey shelters in a strange cabin where a voice demands a story, and a drowned neighbour appears with a blackthorn stick.
African Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Maku Mawu and Maku Fia
Two friends nicknamed “I will die God’s death” and “I will die the King’s death” draw a jealous king’s attention, and a hidden ring becomes a deadly test.
African Folk Tales
Ages 6-8
King Chameleon and the Animals
The animals hold a race to choose a king, and the speedy hare is beaten to the royal stool by a chameleon who rode the whole way on his tail.
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Ages 9-12
The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean
A straw, a coal, and a bean flee an old woman's hearth, try to cross a brook on a straw bridge—and only the bean lives to tell why beans have a seam.
Grimm's Fairy Tales
The Pink
A queen bears a wishing-child; a cook steals him, walls her in a tower—and years later the boy comes home with a pink in his pocket.
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Ages 9-12
How They Went to the Mountains to Eat Nuts
Chanticleer and Partlet feast on mountain nuts, then pick up a duck, a pin and a needle on their way home to a very unlucky innkeeper.
Chinese Folk Tales
The Eight Immortals (II)
Told in a dream to beg the Eight Immortals for help, a homeless man follows lame Li Tia Guai to a tower by the sea but loses his nerve at the leap.
Chinese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Constable
A constable shares a pipe with a stranger who turns out to be the Underworld’s constable, sent to fetch a man who betrayed his friend.
Arabian Nights
The Barber’s Tale of Himself
A Baghdad barber who boasts that he is a man of few words explains how his silence nearly got him executed alongside ten robbers.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
How an Old Man Lost His Wen
An old man's dance wins favor at a demons' feast and removes his facial lump; a neighbor's attempt to repeat the success has a different result.
Jataka Tales
All Ages
The Timid Hare and the Flight of the Beasts
A falling coconut convinces a nervous hare that the earth is breaking up, and soon every animal is fleeing, until the lion asks who actually saw it.
Indian Folk Tales
The Soothsayer’s Son
Left nothing but a gloomy horoscope by his father, young Gangazara sets out to meet his fate, helped by a tiger, a snake and a rat he saved from a well.