Princess stories

The word princess promises a dress and a castle. What these stories mostly deliver is a girl with a problem and a plan. It is worth knowing that before you pick, because the child asking for "a princess one" often wants the plan, not the dress.

The ones where she sorts it out herself

The Goose Girl is a princess stripped of her name and title who has to prove who she is; it suits a six to ten year old who enjoys a slow reveal. A Little Princess, retold from Frances Hodgson Burnett, spends eleven minutes on a girl who loses everything and holds on to her manners and her imagination. Princess Pink Knickers is the loud, funny one, and it is the safest bet for a child who finds traditional princesses a bit dull.

The ones that are really about feeling

The Light Princess, adapted from George MacDonald, is about a girl who cannot cry and what she is missing because of it. Read it when a child has been told to cheer up once too often. The Princess and the Pea is Andersen at his briefest and works from about three.

Both come from the Charles Perrault tale, and they are not interchangeable. Cinderella is the ten-minute version: more room for the sisters, the ashes and the slow turn of the evening. The Magical Tale of Cinderella runs to six and moves quickly from kitchen to ball, which is the one to choose on a school night.

If your child likes knowing that the same story exists in different shapes, say so out loud. Comparing two versions of one tale is one of the easiest ways into talking about stories at all, and there is more on that in our guide to Charles Perrault and the French fairy tale.

The collection stretches from three to twelve. At the younger end, The Princess Mayblossom and The Princess and the Pea are both gentle in mood and short enough for a three year old who is already yawning.

In the middle, The Twelve Dancing Princesses is a puzzle story rather than a scary one: twelve sisters wear out their shoes every night and somebody has to work out how. Rapunzel has the widest age range on the page, five to twelve, because the tower and the witch land differently depending on how old the listener is.

Beyond the European castle

For a child who has started to notice that stories come from places, Princess Kwan-Yin is a retelling of a Chinese legend and reads as calmly as anything in the collection. It is listed for six to ten, runs seven minutes, and its princess gives things away rather than winning them, which is a shape most children have not met before.

Princess Belle-Etoile is a retelling of the Beauty and the Beast story in nine minutes, and reading it alongside a version your child already knows makes the point that the same bones can wear very different clothes.

Twenty-two evenings is not many. The natural next stop is kings and queens, which shares several stories but tilts towards rulers who get things wrong, and fairy stories, where the magic is the point rather than the crown.

If your child is three or four and the longer princess tales are losing them halfway, the preschooler stories page is sorted for shorter attention and gentler endings. The Princess Who Wasn't is a good bridge: it has the trappings, but the point is about being yourself rather than being royal.