About Kahniyan

Kahniyan publishes stories for children in English, retold so they can be read aloud in under ten minutes.

What is on the site

There are six sections. Panchatantra stories and Aesop's fables are the oldest material, both around two thousand years old. Alif Laila covers the Thousand and One Nights, including Aladdin, Ali Baba and Sindbad. Moral stories gathers tales from Greek myth, Jataka tales and South Asian folk humour. The horror stories and riddles are written for this site.

How the stories are written

Every story is retold in our own words rather than copied from an existing translation. Each one carries the moral of the story, five comprehension questions with answers, the harder words explained, and a short set of frequently asked questions.

The comprehension questions are the sort a teacher would ask. They are there so that a parent reading with a child has something to talk about afterwards, and so that a teacher can use a story in class without preparing anything.

Sources

The Panchatantra, Aesop's fables, Alif Laila, Jataka tales and Greek myths are all in the public domain. We work from those sources and rewrite them in modern English suited to children aged roughly five to thirteen. Nothing on the site is reproduced from a copyrighted translation or from another website.

For teachers

Everything here is free to use in a classroom. You are welcome to print a story, read it aloud, or use the questions as a worksheet. If you would like a story on a particular theme, write to us and we will consider adding it.

Return to the main story index at any time.