This is the whole tale, the same ten pages it runs in Pillowbook on the phone. Read it here tonight if that is easier. Nothing is cut, nothing asks you to sign up, and every picture was painted for this book.
Reading time is about five minutes at an unhurried pace, one page every thirty seconds or so. The queen is vain and the apple does its work, but the telling stays calm and the ending is happy.
There was a girl in the castle whose hair was as dark as a wet stone, and who sang while she swept the yard. Everyone called her Snow White. The queen who kept the castle was a tall woman in deep plum with a silver circlet, and she had a hand mirror in a brass frame that she looked into far more often than she looked at anybody.One morning the queen looked into the brass frame a long time and said nothing. Then she sent for a quiet man of the household and told him to walk Snow White out past the last of the fields. He walked her as far as the birches, and there he stopped, and said plainly that he was not going to do the rest of it.So she went on. The wood was full of morning: long green light, and dew coming off the ferns as the sun found them. Two deer stood in the bracken and let her pass, and a robin went ahead from branch to branch as if it had somewhere particular in mind. She walked until the light turned low and gold, and then she smelled woodsmoke.The smoke came from a cottage with a small green door, set about with foxgloves, and the door was not locked. Inside stood a long scrubbed table with seven small stools drawn up to it, seven cups, and seven beds in a row under the sloping roof. Snow White called out twice. Nobody answered. She swept the cold hearth, and then lay down across three of the beds and slept.It was dark when the seven came home from the hill with their lanterns swinging: small bearded men in earth-coloured working clothes, each with a hat of his own colour. They came in talking and stopped all at once. The one in the red hat held his lantern up. They stood round the beds whispering for a long time, and none of them wanted to be the one to wake her.She woke by herself, sat up, and said she was sorry, all in one breath. The one in the blue hat said the hearth had not been swept in a fortnight and that she could stop as long as she liked. They lit the candles, put out the bread, and set an eighth stool at the end of the table, made that evening out of a milking stool.After that the cottage was a house with somebody in it all day. She learned which of the beans wanted staking and which wanted leaving alone. She carved the handle of a wooden comb by the fire, made a poor job of it, and kept it anyway. In the evening she heard the seven coming down the hill, because they always came home arguing about something small.One noon a pedlar woman came to the green door with a basket on her arm and a scarf pulled well forward. She was selling apples, she said, and one of them was worth the walk: red on one cheek and gold on the other. Snow White took it to be polite and bit it to be kind, and then sat down on the step and would not wake up.The seven came home and could not rouse her at all. They talked all night and settled nothing. In the morning they carried her out to the garden, where the light was better, thinking she might like to be under the plum tree. On the step the smallest one caught his boot, the whole procession lurched, the bite of apple came loose in her throat, and she coughed and opened her eyes.The pedlar woman had gone from the district by then and was not seen there again. Snow White stayed. That spring the plum tree came out all at once, and they carried the long table into the garden and ate under it, all eight of them, with blossom coming down into the milk. The one in the red hat said it was a nuisance, and did not move his cup.
The end.
Read any of the 12 tonight, free
12 classic fairy tales, ten painted pages each, one story an evening. No sign-up before you can read.
Yes. All ten pages of Snow White are on this page, each with the illustration that belongs to it. Nothing is held back for the app.
Is it suitable for a three year old?
It is written for children between three and eight. The queen is vain and the apple does its work, but the telling stays calm and the ending is happy.
How long does it take to read aloud?
About five minutes at an unhurried pace, which is roughly one page every thirty seconds.
Where do the pictures come from?
They were painted for Pillowbook, one plate per page, in a single visual voice shared across all 12 tales. They are not stock illustrations.
Can I read the other tales here?
Yes. All 12 are on this site in full, free and without an account. The app is for reading them at bedtime — offline, no advertising, one page to a screen — and for the tale it writes about your own child.
