For parents
You do not need any of this to read a story. But if you want to get more out of it, here is what the extra bits on each page are for.
Start with the reading time, not the age
Age bands are the bluntest tool we have. A tired four-year-old and an interested four-year-old want completely different things.
Reading time is more useful. If there is fifteen minutes, pick something around ten. If there are five, use the short version, which every story has.
What the scariness rating means
- 0 - nothing alarming happens at all
- 1 - mild tension, resolved immediately
- 2 - a villain appears, but is never frightening on the page
- 3 - real danger, resolved before the end
- 4 and 5 - we do not publish these
We soften the traditional endings. Nobody is eaten, nobody is boiled, and nobody dies on the page. The stakes stay real, because a resolution means nothing without them, but the violence is gone.
The questions are not a test
Each story has four or five discussion questions and at least one has no right answer. They are there to keep the conversation going for another two minutes, not to check comprehension.
If a child gives an answer you were not expecting, that is the good outcome.
About the older versions
Some of these tales are genuinely grim in the original. If a child asks, it is fine to say that the very old versions were darker and that people have been changing them for hundreds of years. That is true, and it is how folk tales have always worked.