Witches and wizards

Witches are the part of fairy tales parents most often get wrong by accident, because the word covers everything from a comic old woman to a genuinely menacing figure. The table below is an honest ladder rather than a rating: work up it at your child's pace.

Start here

The Missing Unicorn and The Forgotten Tales of the Meteor Witch both use magic as wonder rather than threat, and both are listed for ages five to eight. The Seven Foals at six minutes has an enchantment in it but no menace worth the name.

Hansel and Gretel is eight minutes, retold from the Brothers Grimm, and listed for ages six to ten for good reason. Two children are abandoned in a wood, a witch fattens one of them up, and the ending is violent. It is also one of the most useful stories ever told about siblings keeping their heads.

Read it, but read it deliberately: not as the last story of the night, and not when your child is already unsettled. Our guide to fairy tales and fear sets out what frightens children at which age, how to tell nervous from thrilled, and what to do if you have misjudged it.

If it does land badly

Do not promise it was not scary — your child knows better. Retell the ending in their words, ask what Gretel did that was clever, and finish the night on something short and gentle instead.

In several of these stories the witch is a problem to be solved rather than a person to be feared. The Old Witch at seven minutes is the classic shape: a test, a choice, a reward. Long, Broad and Sharpsight gives the job to three companions with three absurd talents, which takes the weight off the wizard entirely.

The Three Princesses in the Blue Mountain and The Bird with Nine Heads are both rescue quests where the magic sits on the hero's side as often as against them. The Pumpkin Giant is the odd one out and the funniest; it is nine minutes, listed from four, and the threat in it is so absurd that it defuses itself.

Prince Ariel rounds the ten out at seven minutes for a four to eight year old, with enchantment used as a puzzle rather than a punishment.

If the draw is spells rather than witches, magic stories is the much bigger collection and carries far less risk. If the draw is a frightening figure your child enjoys being frightened by, giants, trolls and ogres scratches the same itch with a villain who is comic by design.

And for an older child who has decided they want the real thing, the big kids stories page collects what stands up to a nine or ten year old.