Children love the story of “Mrs Simkins’ Bathtub” - in which the bath gets bored in the bathroom and goes walkabout. Linda Allen’s short tale is delightfully cosy, as are many others in The Puffin Book of Five-Minute Stories (Puffin pound;12.99).
Read Me a Story, Please (Orion Children’s Books pound;20) is Wendy Cooling’s collection of 50 “readaloud” tales that last for two, five and 10 minutes.
Anthologies tend towards blandness, but most of the stories in these selections are fresh and crisp, and make wonderful soothers.
