Wolf stories

No animal has been cast as the enemy more often. Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids, both retold from the Brothers Grimm, are the classic shape: a wolf pretends to be someone safe and is found out too late.

Children usually handle this better than adults expect, because the wolf is always beaten. But not always, and not at every age. Our guide to fairy tales and fear covers what typically frightens a three year old as against a seven year old, and what to do on the night when the wolf follows your child out of the story.

If it has already gone wrong

Do not argue that it was not scary. Re-tell the ending together, in their words, with the wolf losing. Then read something with no wolf in it at all before the light goes off.

Three of the eight quietly refuse the casting. Huffy Puffy Wolf is nine minutes, marked calm, listed for three to seven, and it is the wolf's version of events. The Wolf and the Shepherd is eight minutes about trust being built rather than betrayed. The Wolf and the Lamb here ends in kindness changing a heart, which will surprise anybody who knows the original fable.

These are the ones to reach for if your child likes wolves and you would rather not spend every evening on menace.

The wolf collection carries the gentler four-minute telling, listed from age three, which keeps the encounter but softens it. The fuller five-minute version sits in the forest and woodland collection and is listed from four. Choose by how your child handled the last frightening thing they met, not by their birthday.

Reading either one well

The dangerous moment in both is the conversation in the cottage, and it works best slowly and quietly rather than loudly. Let your child say the famous lines with you. A child reciting "all the better to see you with" is a child in charge of the wolf, not frightened of him.

The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing and The Wolf and the Crane are both retold Aesop fables and both take six minutes. The first has given English a phrase your child will meet for the rest of their life, which is a reason to read it early. The Nurse and the Wolf makes a wolf look foolish for believing what he is told.

Fables give you the wolf at his least frightening, because the story is over before the fear has anywhere to settle. They are a sensible first wolf for a cautious four year old.

For more of that register, fox stories is the larger trickster collection, and gentle sleepy stories is where to land afterwards if the evening needs bringing down.