🌙
Classic🕐 8 min read
Goodnight Moon
Margaret Wise Brown
There is a room you remember. Maybe not this exact room — but one like it. A room where the light came in soft and golden in the afternoon...
👠
Fairy Tale🕐 12 min read
Cinderella
Charles Perrault / Brothers Grimm
Her name was Ella, and the cinders came later. Before the cinders, there was a house with a garden and a mother who smelled like lavender...
🐻
Fairy Tale🕐 8 min read
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
Robert Southey
The bears had a system. Most families do, whether they know it or not. A set of unspoken agreements about how the morning works...
🌹
Fairy Tale🕐 14 min read
Beauty and the Beast
Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve
The merchant had six children and the sea took everything. Not the sea itself — the ships, and the storms, and the particular cruelty of insurance policies...
🐰
Classic🕐 10 min read
The Velveteen Rabbit
Margery Williams
He was given at Christmas, in a stocking, between an orange and a packet of nuts. This is how most velveteen rabbits enter the world — as afterthoughts...
🏰
Fairy Tale🕐 10 min read
Sleeping Beauty
Charles Perrault / Brothers Grimm
The curse was given at a party, which is where most curses are given, if you think about it...
🪵
Classic🕐 16 min read
Pinocchio
Carlo Collodi
Geppetto carved the boy because he was lonely, and loneliness makes people build things. Not the productive kind of building — not bridges or businesses...
🫘
Fairy Tale🕐 10 min read
Jack and the Beanstalk
English fairy tale
Jack's mother told him to sell the cow, and he came home with beans. Let's sit with that for a moment...
🪔
Folk Tale🕐 14 min read
Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
One Thousand and One Nights
Aladdin was not a good kid. The story usually softens this — spirited, it says, or adventurous, or diamond in the rough...
⚔️
Folk Tale🕐 13 min read
Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
One Thousand and One Nights
Ali Baba was poor, and his brother Cassim was not, and this was the central fact of both their lives...
🍲
Folk Tale🕐 9 min read
Stone Soup
European folk tale
Three strangers walked into a village at the end of a long road, and the village didn't want them there...
🐸
Fairy Tale🕐 8 min read
The Frog Prince
Brothers Grimm
The princess dropped the ball because she wasn't paying attention. That's not the version you heard as a child...
🐺
Aesop's Fable🕐 7 min read
The Boy Who Cried Wolf
Aesop
There was a boy, and his name doesn't matter. Call him whatever you like. Call him Thomas, or Lucas, or that kid from down the road...
🍪
Fairy Tale🕐 8 min read
The Gingerbread Man
English fairy tale
The old woman made him on a Thursday. Not for any particular reason. There was no grandchild coming, no holiday...
🍇
Aesop's Fable🕐 6 min read
The Fox and the Grapes
Aesop
The fox was not hungry. Let's get that out of the way. She wasn't starving, wasn't desperate...
🥚
Aesop's Fable🕐 7 min read
The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
Aesop
The farmer found the egg on a Tuesday. He almost missed it. He was doing the morning rounds — the same rounds he'd done every morning for twenty-two years...
🦁
Aesop's Fable🕐 7 min read
The Lion and the Mouse
Aesop
The lion was sleeping. This was not unusual. Lions sleep somewhere between sixteen and twenty hours a day...
🎵
Folk Tale🕐 9 min read
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Brothers Grimm / Robert Browning
The rats came first. They came the way all infestations come — not in a wave, but in increments...
🌷
Fairy Tale🕐 9 min read
Thumbelina
Hans Christian Andersen
A woman planted a seed because she wanted a child, and what grew was not what she expected...