How these are written

Every story is retold in plain modern English at a reading level a six-year-old can follow, and read aloud comfortably in under five minutes. Sentences are short. Names are kept to the ones that matter.

We keep the shape of the original story rather than smoothing it into a moral. Children notice when a story has been flattened, and they lose interest quickly.

What we leave out

Several of these stories contain violence, and we do not pretend otherwise — but we do not dwell on it. Goliath falls; we do not describe what that looked like. The flood happens; we stay with Noah and the animals.

Where a story has a genuinely difficult edge, we say so plainly in the notes rather than hiding it, so you are not caught out by a question at bedtime.

Questions children actually ask

“Did that really happen?” Families answer this differently, and it is not our place to answer it for you. What we can say is that the story is very old, it has been told for thousands of years, and people still tell it because it means something.

“Why was that person mean?” Usually the honest answer is that people in these stories behave like people do — sometimes badly. The stories rarely pretend otherwise, and that is part of why they last.

“Can we read it again?” Yes. Repetition is how young children learn a story well enough to think about it.