Bedtime stories for preschoolers

The book that worked at eighteen months starts to feel thin. The child has heard the pattern, learned it, and is now interested in the thing patterns are made of: what happens, why, and what happens next.

But a real plot at bedtime has a catch. Tension wakes children up. A story with a genuine threat in it, read at eight in the evening, works against the thing you are trying to do.

The size that fits is a small event with a soft resolution. Someone loses something and finds it. Someone is left out and gets included. Five to seven minutes, one clear problem, a warm ending, and the child can still fall asleep afterward.

Stories about friendship carry particularly well at this age, because a preschooler is living exactly that question every day at nursery: who plays with me, and what happens when they do not.