Little ones · ages 3–5 · comfortable from 3 with a grown-up · Retold from the Panchatantra
Reading aloud? A note for you
This is a short, gentle one — a bird who won’t stop giving advice, and a monkey who finally loses his patience with her. Slow down for the shivering monkey’s chattering teeth; little ones like to shiver along. There’s no danger and nobody is hurt, but a home does come apart at the end, so let that land quietly rather than rushing past it. If your child asks why the monkey didn’t just move away, that’s the whole story — some listeners don’t stop even when they’re asked to. In the old telling the monkey answers her with a string of insults before he climbs the tree; we leave those out, so he just tells her plainly to stop.
A light rain had started, pattering on the leaves high over the banyan, though none of it reached the dry roots below. “Come,” said Nani, and looked at each of her three in turn. “Mira, my Curious One — come sit where you can see my hands. Leo, my Eager One — settle those wriggling feet, there’s a story coming.” She waited while Dev nudged his sandals straight beside the root before he’d sit. “And Dev, my Careful One… come, settle in close.” Dev tucked himself in, finally satisfied. Bupam swung down closer, out of the wet.
“Tonight,” said Nani, “is a small story the monkey told his friend the crocodile, long ago, beside the sea. It’s about giving advice to somebody who never asked for it — and what happens when you won’t stop, even after you’ve been asked to.”
She folded her hands. “Listen.” And she began.
Once, in a certain wood, a hen-sparrow and her mate built their nest high in a tree, twig over twig, soft as a cup.
One day, out of season, hail came rattling down from a cold sky. A monkey, caught out in it with nowhere to go, ducked under that very tree, hugging his knees. His teeth chattered — tat-tat-tat-tat — and his whole body shook.
The hen-sparrow looked down at him from her warm nest and felt sorry for him. “You have hands, and feet, almost like a person,” she called kindly. “Why don’t you build yourself a proper house, so you’re never caught shivering like this again?”
The monkey did not want her advice. He looked up at her and said, plainly and sharply, “Be still. I did not ask you.”
But the hen-sparrow kept right on. She told him again how he ought to build a house, and then again, the same good advice, over and over — even after he had asked her, more than once, to stop.
So the monkey climbed the tree. He was not answering an insult — he simply would not be argued with any longer. And with his hands, the very hands she had praised, he pulled her cosy nest apart, twig by twig, until nothing was left of it but scattered straw.
Nani let that sit a moment before she went on, quiet and plain. “Save your good advice,” she said, “for the ears that are asking for it. The kindest words in the world won’t help, if the one hearing them never wanted to hear them at all.”
Here, under our tree, the rain had eased to almost nothing, just a drip now and then off the highest leaves.
Dev, who had listened without a single word the whole way through, finally spoke into the quiet. “I wouldn’t have stopped,” he said, “even if she asked.”
Nani looked at him for a moment. “I believe you,” she said softly. “That’s why I’m telling you now, while you’re small, and not later, when it’s harder to hear.”
Nobody said anything else, and the last of the rain finished falling.
For the grown-up (not read aloud): the heart of it — save your advice for someone who actually wants it.
Where it comes from: retold from the Panchatantra (the hen-sparrow’s advice, Book 4).
More stories for ages 3–5
The Rabbit and the Moon · The Bird’s Golden Gift · The Hollow Drum
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