5-minute stories

The number on every story card is a read-aloud estimate, not a silent-reading one. Silent reading at an adult's pace would make most of these stories two minutes long and the figure useless to anyone holding a book at half past seven.

About 130 words a minute

Read aloud properly, with pauses at the full stops and a bit of weight on the good lines, most adults land between 120 and 150 words a minute. The estimates here assume roughly 130, which is a pace a child can actually follow. If you read faster than that, you are reading too fast for a four-year-old, whatever the clock says.

What the estimate leaves out

It counts the words on the page and nothing else. It does not count questions, the voices you do for the wolf, the argument about which page you are on, or the pause while someone fetches a different cuddly toy. In a real bedroom, a five-minute story usually takes seven or eight minutes. That is worth knowing before you promise one more.

Not much plot, which is the point. A five-minute story has room for one character, one problem and one turn, and the best of them use that constraint rather than fighting it.

Fables are the natural inhabitants of this length. The Crow and the Pitcher is four minutes and contains a single clever idea. The Boy Who Cried Wolf is five and has a beginning, a repeated middle and a consequence. There are dozens more on the Aesop's fables page, and almost all of them belong here too.

The surprise is how many famous tales fit. The Emperor's New Clothes is three minutes, The Little Mermaid four in its retelling here, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves five. They are shorter than the versions you may remember because the retellings keep the shape and cut the digressions, which is exactly what a tired parent wants at this hour.

What does not fit at this length is a subplot or a slow build, so do not come to this page looking for a story with a twist you did not see coming. Come to it for a single clear idea told well. The Fir Tree spends its five minutes on one tree wishing its life away, and The Dog and the Shadow has one moment of greed and one consequence. Both are better for the constraint.

Four situations, mostly.

• Bedtime has already overrun. Reach for The Two Soldiers and the Robber at two minutes or The Bow and the Lyre at three, and read them slowly rather than reading something longer quickly.
• Someone has woken from a bad dream. A short, familiar, entirely gentle story resets the night better than talking about the dream does. The Anxious Leaf is about being frightened and then being all right, which is the note you want.
• A toddler is the audience. Most of the toddler stories live on this page, including Little Red Hen with its repeating line to join in with.
• You are running on empty. There is no shame in five minutes; our guide for exhausted parents makes the case that a short story read warmly beats a long one read flatly.

The risk of short stories is obvious: finish one in five minutes and a child will reasonably ask for another. The fix is to set the number before you open anything. Two stories, chosen now, both from this page, lights off after the second. A decided number is much easier to hold to than a decided time, because a child cannot argue with counting.

If the negotiation is the real problem rather than the length, what to do when your child will not settle is the guide for it, and how long should a bedtime story be works through the ages and the arithmetic.

When five minutes has stopped being enough on most nights, the ten-minute stories are the next shelf along. For a last story that is deliberately quiet whatever its length, the gentle sleepy stories are the ones to finish on, and tonight's story will simply choose for you if nobody can decide.

Given ten minutes, most families are better off reading two five-minute stories than one ten-minute tale, particularly below the age of five. Two endings mean two chances to settle, and a child who loses the thread of the first one still gets a whole story out of the second.

Pair them by contrast

Choose one with something happening and one with nothing happening. The Mice in Council followed by The Fir Tree is the shape: a problem and an argument, then five quiet minutes about waiting.

The order is the whole trick

Always finish on the calmer of the two. A funny story last leaves a child bouncing, however well it was read, which is why The Dog and the Shadow and the other gentle tales here are worth keeping back rather than spending first.