Free short bedtime stories for kids
Peabody has 69 free short bedtime stories for kids, all marked gentle, from classics like The Three Little Pigs to Peabody's own. Each shows how long it takes to read aloud, from about 1 minute to about 8 minutes, and opens at once with no sign-up. Free through the end of 2026.
Gentle, and short enough for tonight
Every story here carries Peabody's gentle mark, the mildest of its four tone marks (gentle, spooky, scary and horror), so none has the spooky mark. The times are worked out from each story's length at about 130 words a minute, a comfortable pace to read aloud, so treat them as a guide. The shortest are about a minute long and suit the youngest listeners, and the longest are about eight minutes.
Classic bedtime stories
45 are classics, retold short: The Crow and the Pitcher, The Tortoise and the Hare, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Gingerbread Man, Henny Penny, The Three Little Pigs, The Fox and the Grapes, The Princess and the Pea and more.
Reading them aloud, or having them read to you
A grown-up can read any of these aloud from a phone or tablet, one page at a time, and a child who reads can take over. Where a device can speak, the story page has a Read to me button that reads each page aloud in the device's own voice.
More free stories
- The whole library: free stories by reading level, no account needed.
- Classic stories retold short: fables, fairy tales, myths and legends.
- Free Aesop's fables for kids, with the lesson of each
- Free classic fairy tales for kids
- Free beginning reader books for kids just learning to read
- By level: Level 1 · Level 2 · Level 3 · Level 4 · Level 5 · Level 6
Questions parents ask
Which of these are for the youngest children?
The shortest, at the top of the table, are level 1 stories of one or two minutes, with a picture on every page. A grown-up can read them aloud in a moment, and a new reader can try them alone.
Are these stories calm enough for bedtime?
Every one carries the gentle mark, the mildest of Peabody's four tone marks. Whether a story is calming for your child is for you to judge, so read the short description on its page first.
Do the stories cost anything?
No. Every story on this page is free to read through the end of 2026, with no account and no card.
Checked against how Peabody works on 19 October 2026. Written with help from AI, from Peabody's own code and library. Peabody is a learning app, not an assessment: if you're worried about your child's learning, talk to their teacher.