The Boy Who Cried Wolf
About 1 min read aloud
The whole story, told short. Ages 4-9.
0% · About 2 min left
A boy whose job was to watch sheep on a hill got so bored that one afternoon he stood up and shouted that there was a wolf.
The whole village came running, the baker with a rolling pin and the blacksmith with a hammer, ready to fight a wolf for him. There was no wolf. The boy laughed until he cried, and they went back down, and some of them laughed too.
Three days later he did it again. This time nobody laughed. The blacksmith just looked at him for a while, which was worse.
A week after that, the boy looked up and there was a wolf. It was bigger than he had imagined, and much quieter, and it was looking at the sheep.
He shouted. The baker heard him and kept kneading. The blacksmith heard him and did not look up. Nobody came.
Afterwards he sat on the rock in the dark and understood exactly what he had spent. In the morning he went down and told the truth, and it took a very long time before anyone believed him again.
But he kept telling it. And eventually they did.