Dragon stories

A child who asks for a dragon story is usually asking for size and fire, not for something frightening. This collection leans that way on purpose. The Dragon Tamers turns on understanding and respect rather than a sword, and The Fiery Dragon ends with difference treated as a strength.

The Dragon of the North is the clearest example: the courage in it is the courage to go and find out what the other side is actually like. If your child has been nervous of dragons in films, start there.

The ones with a proper fight in them

Two of the eight do give you a dragon to beat. Prince Yamato Take and Three Feathers both run on courage and cleverness against something genuinely dangerous, and both are listed towards the older end. Neither is gory, but neither pretends the dragon is a friend, so save them for a child who enjoys the tension rather than one who endures it.

The Tale of Tom Thumb is a European folk tale retold at eleven minutes, and it is the one most likely to be interrupted by questions. Three Feathers runs to ten and rewards a listener who can hold three brothers and three tasks in their head at once. Both are better on a Friday than a Tuesday.

The five-minute option

The Velvet Paw and the Throne of Stars is the shortest here at five minutes, and its moral — that the smallest can be the bravest — is the one children take from dragon stories anyway. It is the reliable one when the light is already off.

The dragon voice is the whole performance, and it is easy to overdo at bedtime. A low, slow, slightly bored dragon is funnier and calmer than a roaring one, and it keeps a four year old on your side. Our guide to character voices for bedtime stories has more on pitching a big voice so it does not wake the child up.

Prince Yamato Take and The Amber Amulet of the Dragon Star both run to eight minutes and both have a quiet ending, so you can start loud and land soft.

Dragons sit next door to two other collections. Giants, trolls and ogres gives you the same scale with a different sort of enemy, and friendly monster stories keeps the "big creature turns out to be kind" shape your child is probably actually after.

For sheer quantity of magic, fairy stories is the larger pool. And if dragons were really a request for adventure, the bravery and courage stories cover it without a single scale.

One more thing worth knowing: eight stories is few enough that your child will learn them. That is not a problem. Rereading the same dragon for a fortnight is how a four year old takes ownership of a story, and our guide to reading the same story every night explains why it is worth putting up with.