Belonging stories

Because the theme is small, it is worth knowing all of it. The nine divide neatly into three.

The wrong shape

The Ugly Duckling (7 minutes) and Thumbelina (7 minutes) are both Andersen, and both about a creature who is measured against the wrong species. The Velveteen Rabbit is the quietest of the three and the one most likely to catch a parent out.

The wrong house

Cinderella at ten minutes is the longest story on this page, and it is about a girl living as a stranger at home. Mudjee Monedo and Sunshine Stories both send a child out to find where they fit instead.

Not brave enough yet

The Anxious Leaf is five minutes and the best one here for a worried three-year-old. A Christmas Star and Santa Never Forgets! both put a small character at the edge of something and let them in.

If you have four minutes, take A Christmas Star. If your child has had a bad day at school, take The Ugly Duckling and say nothing about school. If they are worried about something specific and small, The Anxious Leaf is the one, because the leaf’s fear is named and then answered by a friend rather than by an adult.

Save The Velveteen Rabbit for a night when you are not tired. It is eight minutes, gentle throughout, and it asks something of the reader as well as the listener.

Reading one to two children at once

Most of these work across a wide age gap, which is unusual. Thumbelina and Cinderella both hold a four-year-old with the pictures in the language and a nine-year-old with the plot, so nobody has to sit through something aimed at their sibling.

What none of them will do is act as an argument. If one child is being left out at school and you read The Ugly Duckling at them, they will hear the instruction rather than the story. Read it because it is good, not because it is relevant.

Two of the nine come from Hans Christian Andersen, whose own childhood is very much the story he kept retelling; our guide to Hans Christian Andersen is worth ten minutes if The Ugly Duckling has become a fixture in your house.

This theme branches from friendship, which has 81 stories and is the obvious next stop. Identity covers the neighbouring question of who you are rather than where you fit, and for something smaller still, mice has four stories in which being the least important creature present turns out to be an advantage.

If you would rather browse by mood than by theme, stories about feelings is a much larger collection with a good deal of overlap, and it is the sensible place to look once these nine are used up.