Little ones · ages 3–5 · comfortable from 3 with a grown-up · Retold from the Panchatantra
Reading aloud? A note for you
This one is short, and it works because the fright is bigger than the danger. Slow down on the big booming sound and the jackal’s first fear — let the silence after it stretch a little before you go on. Your child may ask what was making the noise, or why the jackal went so close if he was scared; both questions are answered a few lines later, so you can just say “keep listening.” There’s nothing to soften here — nobody is ever in danger, not even the jackal — so you can let his fear be big without worrying it will stay with your listener.
Somewhere behind the house, a balloon Leo had been carrying all afternoon popped with a sudden bang, and for one second the whole evening went quiet before anyone laughed. Mira, Leo and Dev were already tucked into the roots when Nani came to join them.
She looked at each one in turn. “Mira, my Curious One, still listening for that bang. Leo, my Eager One — sorry about your balloon. And Dev, my Careful One, right here close by, where you like it.”
Leo grinned, not sorry at all, and asked — “Is it a scary one?”
“A little bit,” said Nani, “and then not at all. This is the story a jackal told the lion he served, on the night the lion admitted he was afraid of a great booming sound he couldn’t see. It’s about how a sound, all by itself, is nothing to be afraid of.”
“Listen.” And she began.
In a stretch of forest where a great battle had once been fought, there lived a jackal, thin with hunger, who went out each day to look for something to eat. One evening his search led him onto the old battleground itself, empty now and overgrown.
He had gone only a little way when a huge sound rolled out across the field — BOOM — so big it seemed to shake the ground under his paws.
The jackal froze. His heart went tight with fear. Something terrible is out there, he thought. Something big enough to make a sound like that.
But he did not run. He crept forward instead, peering low through the grass — and there, in the middle of the field, he saw it: an enormous drum, so big it looked like a little hill, left behind from the battle long ago.
He watched it a while, and he noticed something. The drum only boomed when the wind pushed the tall grass-tips against its side; when the wind died down, the drum was silent as a stone.
So the jackal crept closer, and closer still, until he stood right beside it. It’s only a sound, he thought. Whatever is inside it can’t be so fierce, if it never moves and never comes out. And then a new thought came to him, and his mouth watered: a thing that big and that round — surely it’s stuffed full of meat and fat!
So he found a soft spot in the old leather, gnawed a hole through it, and squeezed himself inside.
He found no meat. He found no fat. He found nothing at all but old dry wood and old dry skin, empty as a fallen nutshell.
The jackal backed out again into the evening light, and he laughed at himself, right there in the grass — because the sound that had frightened him so badly had never been anything to fear at all.
Here, under our tree, Leo laughed for real this time. “He crawled inside a drum!”
Mira shook her head, smiling. “All that fear, over a sound.”
Dev didn’t say anything, but his hands had come loose from his sweater sleeves, and he was smiling his small, private smile.
Nani folded her hands in her lap. “Off to bed with you now, little ones,” she said, and the evening settled soft around the tree, quiet at last, even where Leo’s balloon had gone off with a bang.
For the grown-up (not read aloud): the heart of it — a loud sound, all by itself, is nothing to be afraid of.
Where it comes from: retold from the Panchatantra (the jackal and the drum, Book 1). In the old book, Damanaka the jackal tells it to Pingalaka the lion.
More stories for ages 3–5
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