About WishingTales
WishingTales is a small library of short stories, for three kinds of reader: a parent reading aloud to a child, a child reading alone, and an adult who wants something brief. Every story is meant to be finished in one sitting and to sound good read aloud, which is why they are full of talk and short scenes rather than long descriptions.
How we make stories
Each story is written by an AI model and then reviewed by an automated check. That check is two things: mechanical tests for what a person notices reading aloud — length, how much of the story is dialogue, sentence and paragraph shape, phrases that read as machine-written — and a second model, from a different family to the one that wrote the draft, reading it the way an editor would. A draft that fails is revised and checked again. A story that cannot be brought up to standard is thrown away rather than published.
No person reads these stories before they are published. We would rather say that plainly than let you assume otherwise. What it means in practice: an automated check catches contradictions, shape and padding, and it does not catch everything a person would. Covers are checked for stray lettering before they ship; the prose is not proofread by hand.
Stories are signed by WishingTales rather than by an invented author name. There is no fictional person behind this site, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
Every story on this site is marked as written with AI assistance. If that is not what you want to read to your children, that is a fair call — the classics are retellings of stories people have been telling for a hundred years or more.
Where the classics come from
Our retellings start from stories that are in the public domain: published in 1930 or earlier, by authors who died in 1955 or earlier. That rule keeps us clear in the United States, the European Union, and Indonesia at the same time. We work from editions that are themselves free to use, and we write new words — we never copy the original text. Each classic shows its source, and there is a full list on the sources page.
What it costs
Nothing. Reading is free, there are no ads, and nothing to buy. Where a story has narration, you can listen to it for free. Reading preferences (text size, spacing, theme, and how far through a story you are) and listening positions are stored in your own browser and never sent to us. An account is optional: it carries your progress and favourites between devices, and it is a parent/reader account only — there are no child accounts. See the privacy page for the detail.
Say hello
Corrections, complaints, and story requests are welcome at [email protected].