Cinderella: The Story, and How to Tell It Well

Cinderella is one of the most widely told stories on earth — versions exist across Europe, Asia and Africa, some over a thousand years old. It is also longer and more complicated than most fairytales, which makes it a slightly awkward bedtime read if you have not thought about it in advance.

Here is the story, where it came from, and how to tell it so it works.

The story in brief

A girl loses her mother. Her father remarries, and his new wife has two daughters of her own. When the father dies, the stepmother and stepsisters reduce the girl to a servant in her own home. She sleeps by the fireplace and is covered in ash — cinders — which is where her name comes from.

The king announces a ball. The stepsisters go; Cinderella is forbidden. A magical helper appears and transforms her rags into a gown and a pumpkin into a carriage, with one condition: the magic ends at midnight.

At the ball, the prince dances with her all evening. At midnight she flees, losing a slipper on the stairs. The prince searches the kingdom for the girl whose foot fits it. It fits Cinderella. They marry.

Where it comes from

The oldest recognisable version is Chinese — the story of Ye Xian, written down in the ninth century, with a fish instead of a fairy godmother and a golden shoe.

The version most of us know comes from Charles Perrault, France, 1697. He supplied the pumpkin, the glass slipper and the fairy godmother.

The Brothers Grimm published a considerably darker German version in 1812, in which the helper is a tree on the mother's grave, and the stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to fit the shoe. Birds notice the blood and expose them. At the wedding, the same birds peck out the stepsisters' eyes.

Worth knowing which version you have picked up.

What to edit at bedtime

The mutilation. If you are reading Grimm, skip it. There is no version of a heel being sliced off that improves a bedtime.

The eye-pecking. Same.

The stepmother's cruelty, if it is dwelt on. Some retellings linger on the psychological abuse. Fine for older children; unnecessary for a four-year-old, who needs only to understand that Cinderella is treated unfairly.

The dead mother, depending on your child. Usually fine — it is stated and moved past quickly. But a child who has experienced loss may need you to handle it differently, or to pick another story.

What to keep: the unfairness. The story does not work without it, and children have a fierce, well-developed sense of injustice. They want the unfairness established so the reversal lands.

How to read it well

Cinderella is long. Attention is the main risk. Some things that help:

Move fast through the setup. The mother, the remarriage, the death of the father — three sentences. Children do not need the domestic detail, and dwelling on it is where you lose them.

Slow down for the transformation. This is the bit they came for. Pumpkin to carriage, mice to horses, rags to a gown. Take your time and let each change land separately.

Use the clock. Midnight is the story's engine. Building slight tension as it approaches — "the clock said eleven... then half past eleven..." — gives a four-year-old something to track.

Do the slipper as a sequence of failures. First stepsister: no. Second stepsister: no. Then Cinderella. It is the three-beat pattern that fairytales run on, and children love the inevitability.

Keep the ending brief. Once the slipper fits, finish. Wedding descriptions are where a tiring child gives up.

Questions children ask

"Why does the stepmother hate her?" The story does not say, and you do not need to invent a reason. "Some people are unkind, and she was" is a sufficient answer for a small child, and truer than a tidy explanation.

"Why doesn't she just leave?" A good question from an older child, and worth taking seriously — a girl in that period had nowhere to go, no money and no rights. This is a genuinely interesting conversation with a seven-year-old.

"Why doesn't the prince recognise her face?" Nobody has ever answered this. Say so. Children enjoy adults admitting a story has a hole in it.

Is it a good story to give a child?

The common objection is that Cinderella waits to be rescued.

There is something in that, and it is worth not being the only story a child gets. But the objection is often overstated. Cinderella endures, keeps her decency under sustained mistreatment, and takes the opportunity when it appears. The reversal is the point: the child watching an unfair situation get corrected.

The practical answer is variety. Read Cinderella, and also read stories where the protagonist causes the outcome. Our list of classics has a range.

You can also flip it directly — a personalised story where your child is the one who solves the problem is a useful counterweight. That is one of the things the Personalized Story Creator is for.

Ages and length

Works from about four. Below that the plot is too long and the emotional content too abstract.

Read at a bedtime pace, a full version runs eight to twelve minutes — on the long side, so consider it a one-story night. Shorter picture book editions come in around five.

If you are reading Grimm to an older child, save it for daytime.

Taletune has Cinderella in its library, tagged by age and length, and narrated in your own voice. Free on iOS and Android.