Loyalty & Devotion
Promises, family duties, love and commitment place characters under pressure in these stories. Their decisions can reveal care, conflicting responsibilities or demands that ask too much. Examine who makes each promise and whether it was freely chosen; suffering by itself does not prove devotion or create a duty to remain in danger.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Cuchulain and the Hound of Culain
Late for a feast at the smith Culain’s house, the boy Setanta must face a savage watchdog armed only with a hurley stick and a ball.
Celtic Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Children of Lir
Their jealous stepmother turns Lir’s four children into swans, doomed to wander the lakes and seas of Ireland for nine hundred years.
Indian Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Savitri and the Lord of Death
When a wise man warns that her chosen husband will die within a year, Princess Savitri marries him anyway, and when Death comes for him, she follows.
Korean Folk Tales
The Story of Chunhyang
A governor’s son climbs a mountain to admire the spring view and glimpses a girl flying up on a swing among the peach blossoms in a garden below.
Japanese Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
The Snow Woman (Yuki-Onna)
Spared by a ghostly woman of the snow on the night his master freezes, a young woodcutter keeps her secret for years, until he tells his own wife.
Arabian Nights
Scheherazade and the Sultan
To end the Sultan's deadly weddings, the vizier's daughter Scheherazade volunteers as his bride, with a plan that depends on one story.
Japanese Folk Tales
All Ages
The Star Lovers
The Weaving Lady and the ox-herd love so much they neglect their work, so her father sets the Celestial River between them, letting them meet one night a year.
Hitopadesha
All Ages
The Doves and the Hunter’s Net
Caught together in a hunter’s net, a flock of doves follows their wise king’s plan to fly off with the net and seek help from a friendly mouse.
Jataka Tales
Ages 6-8
The Golden Goose: A Jataka Tale
A golden goose gives a poor family one feather at a time, until the greedy mother plucks him bare and finds that stolen feathers turn plain white.
Jataka Tales
Ages 6-8
How the Monkey Saved His Troop
When a king’s archers surround a mango tree full of monkeys, their Chief stretches across the river and lets the whole troop run to safety over his back.
Southeast Asian Folk Tales
Ages 9-12
Si Tanggang: The Ungrateful Son and the Curse of Stone
A poor couple’s son sails away and comes home rich, but when he is too proud to welcome his parents aboard, his mother’s words turn his ship to stone.
Aesop's Fables
Ages 3-5
The Lion and the Mouse
A lion laughs when a tiny mouse promises to repay his mercy, until hunters trap him in a net and the mouse gnaws the ropes to set him free.