Free stories for kids to read, and how to choose by age

The most reliable source is public-domain works — texts whose copyright has expired. Project Gutenberg Australia holds ebooks that are public domain in Australia and has a children's literature section. Mind the Australian rule: a work published in the author's lifetime is free here if the author died before 1 January 1955 — the 2005 extension to life plus 70 years was not retroactive. That is why a book that is free in Australia may not be free overseas, and the other way round. For a first read, reach for the old folk tales and fairy tales: short, full of repetition and easy to read aloud. They are complete texts without ads, and you can read them in the browser or print them out.

The second route is the library. Your local library is free to join, and most libraries also lend ebooks and audiobooks through an app, so you can download a story to your phone or e-reader and have it offline. Ask at the desk which app your library uses — setting it up takes a few minutes. Beside the classic fairy tales, you'll also find the Australian classics there: Dorothy Wall's Blinky Bill, May Gibbs's Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding or Mem Fox's Possum Magic.

And of course the plain old borrowing desk still works: the children's librarian at any public library will match a book to your child's age better than an online bestseller list.

One more practical note on the classics: many old fairy tales were written down in nineteenth-century language. For a preschooler, feel free to simplify as you read — break up a long sentence, swap an old-fashioned word for a modern one. The story loses nothing; it was told aloud long before anyone wrote it down, and every storyteller told it their own way.

Where else to look when you've run through those two sources:

• The children's section of Project Gutenberg Australia — beyond fairy tales, there are older children's novels and verse; all of it as web text you can copy and print.
• Your library's ebook app — free ebooks and audiobooks in formats you can open on an e-reader or phone, so in the evening you read without a glowing browser.
• ABC Kids listen — the free ABC audio service for children up to about five, with Story Time and music, in the ABC listen app and on DAB+ digital radio. Handy for the car or a sick day rather than for reading together, but it's free and ad-free.

Online texts are good for three things: quickly finding a story for tonight, having something to read on the road, and printing a text you don't have at home. Project Gutenberg Australia and library ebooks work on a phone without installing anything special.

For bedtime reading, though, a phone is the worst choice — the display glows into the dark and every notification pulls both you and your child out of the story. If you read from a device, switch notifications off, or use an e-reader with an e-ink display. Better still, print the text during the day so that in the evening you only have paper.

And watch out for one habit: when a child sees a parent "reading a story off the phone", they can't tell whether you're reading or scrolling. A paper book or a printed page says it clearly: now we're reading.

Read-aloud (narrated) stories on YouTube have their place: in the car, on a sick day, or when a parent's voice is giving out after the third story. If you play them, choose audio without video — there's nothing to watch in a read-aloud story, and without a screen your child pictures the scenes themselves, which is exactly the work a story is meant to do in their head.

Two practical risks: autoplay starts another video you didn't choose once the story ends, and ads can jump into the middle of the story. Prepare a playlist in advance and turn autoplay off.

What a recording can't replace: reading together is a conversation. Your child asks, you answer, you stop at a picture, you go back a page. A recording just keeps going. So treat read-aloud stories as an extra — and leave the bedtime ritual to a live voice. We look at how to build that ritual, audio included, in the article Bedtime stories: texts, audio and a ritual that ends in sleep.

A story that takes two or three minutes to read. Put your child's name in place of Toby's — it sounds completely different then.

The Little Light Who Was Afraid of the Dark

Beyond nine hills and one apple orchard lived a tiny light called Blink. By day Blink swung on blades of grass, but in the evening, when it grew dark, Blink hid inside a lily-of-the-valley bell and trembled. A light that was afraid of the dark — who would ever believe it?

One evening Toby came walking past. He was looking for the way home, and the dark was as thick as plum jam. "Who's shining over there?" he asked. "M-me," squeaked Blink. "But not very brightly, because I'm scared."

"Then we've got it sorted," said Toby. "I'm a bit afraid of the dark too. But if you go in front of me, I'll look at you and not at the dark. And you don't look at the dark — look at the path."

And so off they went. Blink lit up the path, Toby watched Blink, and suddenly the dark wasn't an enemy any more — it was just the night, with a friend shining in it. Ever since, Blink doesn't shine hidden in the lily-of-the-valley in the evening, but above the path. Just in case someone is looking for the way home again.

And if tonight the dark seems too big, just remember: even a little light was once afraid. And what helped was not being alone.

Putting your child's name into a story — like Toby's above — is the oldest storytelling trick there is, and it works every time: a story "about me" is heard differently from a story about a stranger. With classic fairy tales, you can simply swap the name as you read.

If you want to go further, you can get your child a whole personalised book. At Hero of the Book, a story is created in which your child is the hero: the illustrations are made from a single uploaded photo, and their name is woven naturally into the text. For reluctant readers, a book in which they are the hero is often a good reason to keep reading.