Bird stories

Foxes get the reputation for cleverness, but in these fourteen stories it is regularly a bird who works it out. The Crow and the Pitcher is four minutes and turns on a bird raising the water with pebbles, which is the sort of solution a five year old will try to reproduce in the bath.

The Lark and Her Young Ones is eight minutes about preparing rather than panicking. The Birdcatcher, the Partridge, and the Cock is the one that asks most of a listener, and suits six to ten.

The awkward one

The Eagle and the Arrow is six minutes and turns on an eagle brought down by an arrow fletched with its own feathers. It is the bleakest idea in the collection, and a seven year old will want to talk about it. That is a reason to read it, not a reason to skip it, but not at five past eight.

The other great bird theme is vanity. The Vain Jackdaw, retold from Aesop, dresses in borrowed feathers and is found out. The Peacock and the Crane sets beauty against usefulness and lets the plainer bird win. The Fox and the Crow is the flattery one: a crow with cheese and a fox with compliments.

Reading three of them together

Those three in one sitting run to eighteen minutes and make a small, coherent argument about showing off. It is a good Saturday morning rather than a Tuesday night, and children notice the pattern themselves by the third story.

The Farmer and the Cranes and The Swallow and the Other Birds are four minutes each, gentle in mood, and safe for a three to seven year old at the very end of the day. The Twelve Wild Ducks is seven minutes with more magic in it, and The Fox and the Stork is the one about a meal served in the wrong dish, which children find funnier than adults do.

The Crow and the Swan and The Mad Goose and the Tiger Forest are the two that go somewhere rather than making a point, at seven and eight minutes, and both land on coming home.

Half of this collection also appears in Aesop's fables, which is where to go if the four-minute lesson is the format that works for you. Farm stories shares the cockerels, and fox stories shares the villain.

Fourteen stories at an average of six minutes is roughly a week and a half of bedtimes, which makes this a manageable collection to read straight through.

For what all this brevity is doing for your child, the guide to bedtime stories and language development is worth a read; short fables give a child more turns at the pattern of a story than one long tale does.