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readings for children

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For teachers

Don't miss the Workbook of Values, a great selection of short stories with coloring pictures that you can download for free. The best way to enter the world of educational stories.

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JOIN US TO EDUCATE WITH STORIES!

Stories have an incredible educational value due to the their influence on memory, but also because... children love them!
Our aim is to support and help you with this task. In this site:

  • You will find hundred of stories.
  • We will help you to teach values.
  • You can listen to a thousand audio stories.
  • Enjoy time with your children even more.
  • You will learn to tell stories.
  • We also offer you...
  • And create your own.
  • ... losts of educational resources.

If you are an education pro, you know about the benefits of stories better than anyone,

Browse this site at your leisure. Your children will really enjoy our varied and top quality resources. Thousands of teachers are using them right now!
And if you like our work, spread the word: the more people know about us, the more children will benefit.

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Stories for children

At Bedtime Stories, we have a great collection of short stories to educate children about values, with all sorts of characters and situations.
We offer them as a great educational resource for parents and teachers.

New stories and themes are frequently added: you will never be short of new educational stories!

Brodek, Dragon of Day and Night, a story about Peace and sensitivity for beautiful things

The day had arrived. Brodek, the young dragon would have to choose his side, and become either a dragon of light or a dragon of darkness. Both groups, natural enemies, hated each other to death, and each dragon, when its time came, had to choose one side and join its army.

Nearly all dragons decided while they were still young, and trained for years before the big change. But Brodek was undecided. And now time had run out. At dawn, his wings would be covered with the dark blue of night or the gold of the sun, and so they would remain forever, and everything would be hatred for the sun or for the moon, without remedy. This was the price of the magic and terrible gift of breathing fire.

Because of all this, Brodek went to the forest to think, where he hoped to find an answer. But there, sitting in the silence of the night, there were no answers. Just a beautiful white full moon, with pale silver shimmer. And the wind in the leaves of the trees was softer and cooler than usual, as if saying farewell to the young dragon. And night, a deep night full of distant stars ...

For nothing in the World did Brodek want to become a dragon of light in order to hate all that wonder, and he felt his wings slowly begin to dye into the colour of the night.

But the night was losing its strength and making way for the first light of dawn. It was one of Brodek's favourite times of day, and he enjoyed the pink tones of the sky, the gentle heat of the first ray of sun on his face, the glinting crystal and fire shining on the waters, and the joy that was awaking in the woods with the first birdsong ...

No, neither did he want to be a dragon of the night and have to hate such beauty.

And before tears flooded his eyes, before even knowing the final colour of his wings, Brodek flew to the lake, dove in as deep as he could to quench his thirst for peace, and then turned and flew up into the sky, as high as he could, as if trying to escape from the unjust land and his cruel fate. And when he had flown so high that the cold prevented him from moving his wings, he opened his mouth to spit out a great flame, as if to spend it completely, to never have it again.

But instead of fire, from his mouth came a thin layer of frost that covered the fields below, as if his desire for peace and the lake water had worked a miracle. And only then did he discover that he wouldn't be a dragon of the darkness, and neither would he be a dragon of the light, since now one of his wings belonged to the moon, and the other to the sun.

And every so often, Brodek again decorates the fields with his magical frosty breath, as if to remind the World that it is not necessary to choose between day and night when you really don't know how to hate.