The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

7-9 min read
16 pages

The wolf and the seven little kids, the Brothers Grimm tale to read aloud. Their mother tells them how to know him, and he changes both things.

An old goat had seven kids, and she loved them the way any mother loves her children, which is to say completely and with a good deal of worrying.

One day she had to go into the wood for food. «Be careful of the wolf,» she said. «If he gets in, he will eat every one of you. You'll know him by his rough voice and his black feet.»

She had not been gone long when there was a knock. «Open up, children, your mother's here with something for each of you.»

But the voice was rough, and they called back through the door: «You're not our mother. Her voice is soft. You are the wolf.»

The wolf went to the shop and bought a great lump of chalk and ate it, and it made his voice soft. Then he came back and knocked again.

«Open up, children,» he said, and it sounded right. But he had put a paw on the windowsill, and the youngest saw it. «Our mother hasn't got black feet,» they called. «You are the wolf.»

So the wolf went to the baker and made him put dough on his paws, and then to the miller, who did not want to and was made to, and dusted the dough with white flour.

The third time, the voice was soft and the paw on the sill was white, and the kids opened the door.

What came in was the wolf. They ran — under the table, into the bed, into the stove, into the cupboard, behind the washing bowl, under the sink. He found six of them. The seventh, the smallest, was inside the clock case, and the wolf never thought to look there.

Then he went out into the meadow, lay down under a tree, and fell asleep, because six kids is a great deal of anybody's dinner.

The mother came home to an open door and the furniture over and nobody answering. She called each of their names, and at the last one a small voice said, «I'm in the clock.»

He told her everything. She took him out and they went to the meadow, and there was the wolf under the tree, and his belly was moving.

She sent the kid to the house for scissors and a needle and thread. Then she cut the wolf open, very carefully, and one after another the six came out, and they were frightened and rumpled and entirely unharmed, because he had swallowed them whole in his hurry.

«Fetch stones,» she said. «As many as you can carry.» They filled him with stones, all six of them and the smallest helping, and she sewed him up so neatly that he did not stir.

When the wolf woke he was thirsty in a way he had never been thirsty before. He got up, and the stones knocked together inside him, and he said, «What rumbles and tumbles about in my belly? I thought it was six kids, and it feels like rocks.»

He went to the well and leaned over to drink, and the weight of the stones took him forward, and he went in and did not come out. And the seven kids came running round the well and held hands and danced, and their mother sat on the wall and let them.

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Text source: Plot by the Brothers Grimm (1812), public domain. The text was written anew for Marytale — it is not a reprint of anyone else's version.

Where «The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids» comes from and who wrote it down

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The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids

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