Free short stories for 8th graders
Peabody has 14 free short stories for 8th graders at reading level 8, from about 1,266 to 2,206 words each, including fables, fairy tales and true stories. Each opens at once with no sign-up and reads in a few minutes. Free through the end of 2026.
| Story | Kind | Words | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rikki-Tikki-Tavi | Classic, spooky | 1,579 | A young mongoose washed out of his burrow by a summer flood wakes up in a family's garden, curious about absolutely everything. |
| The Bee Line | Peabody story, spooky | 2,206 | Forty bees have taken over Omar's birdbath, and his little sister is too scared to go outside. |
| Bellerophon and Pegasus | Classic, spooky | 1,973 | A young hero is sent to a faraway king carrying a sealed message that asks for his own death. |
| Sinbad and the Roc | Classic | 1,637 | Left behind on a lonely island, the sailor Sinbad finds an egg as big as a palace dome, and then its mother arrives. |
| The Happy Prince | Classic | 1,781 | High above the city stands the golden statue of the Happy Prince, who can see every sorrow in the streets below and cannot move to help. |
| The Secret Garden | Classic | 1,798 | Lonely, sour Mary Lennox is sent to a gloomy house on the Yorkshire moor, where a robin shows her the key to a garden that has been locked for ten years. |
| Black Beauty | Classic | 1,883 | Black Beauty tells his own story, from his happy days as a colt in a meadow to the kind stables, cruel masters and crowded London streets that come after. |
| The Pied Piper of Hamelin | Classic | 1,717 | The town of Hamelin is overrun with rats until a stranger in a coat of red and yellow pipes them all away, for a thousand guilders. |
| Perseus and Medusa | Classic, spooky | 1,944 | A fisherman's foster son promises a wicked king the head of Medusa, whose stare turns people to stone. |
| Bats After Dark | True story | 1,266 | Bats are the only mammals that truly fly, and they find their way in the dark by listening to echoes. |
| The Ice-Crushed Endurance | True story | 1,278 | A true story of Shackleton's ship Endurance, which was trapped and crushed by Antarctic ice in 1915. |
| Robinson Crusoe | Classic | 1,438 | A shipwreck leaves Robinson Crusoe alone on an island, where he builds a home from nothing and counts the years on a wooden post. |
| Tom Sawyer and the Fence | Classic | 1,625 | Tom Sawyer has to whitewash a whole fence on a summer Saturday, so he tricks every boy in town into paying him for the chance to do it. |
| The Sword in the Stone | Classic | 1,872 | Arthur is a clumsy squire who just wants to find his brother a sword, so he politely borrows the one stuck in a stone. |
What level 8 reads like
Peabody works out a story's level from its text, never from the child. At level 8 a sentence is at most 62 words long and a screen holds 100 to 145 words. Reading level 8 shows the rest of the limits and a sample.
Is level 8 right for a 8th grader?
Peabody names its levels for the reading, so level 8 is the one it calls 8th grade. A 8th grader starts one level lower, at level 7, so the first stories feel easy. The level moves up as books run easy. Level 7 stories are a good fit too, and level 9 suits a strong reader.
Stories by kind
- Classics (11): Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, Bellerophon and Pegasus, Sinbad and the Roc, The Happy Prince, The Secret Garden, Black Beauty and more.
- True stories (2): Bats After Dark and The Ice-Crushed Endurance.
- Peabody's own (1): The Bee Line.
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 short stories for 7th graders
- Free Aesop's fables for kids, with the lesson of each
- Free classic fairy tales for kids
- By level: Level 8
Questions parents ask
What reading level are short stories for 8th graders?
Peabody calls level 8 its 8th grade level. It is worked out from the text: sentence length, words on a screen and how common the words are, not from a grade label. A 8th grader starts one level lower, at level 7. The level pages show every level's limits.
Are any of these stories scary?
4 of the 14 are marked spooky: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, The Bee Line, Bellerophon and Pegasus and Perseus and Medusa. The mark is on each story's page, and none are marked scary or horror, which are not open to visitors at all.
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.