Fairy Tales for Kids

The Princess Who Fixed Things

Ages 4-8 · 3 min read

In a kingdom of crooked towers and cobbled streets lived Princess Wren, who did not care for crowns or ballgowns. What she loved was fixing things.

She mended squeaky doors with a drop of oil. She glued the baker’s broken bowl. She even fixed the castle clock, which had been stuck at half past three for a hundred years.

One winter, the great bridge over the river cracked. The farmers could not bring their vegetables to market, and the people grew hungry.

The king called for help. A wizard arrived with a long beard and a longer wand. He waved it, and sparkles flew everywhere, but the bridge stayed cracked.

A knight arrived with a shiny sword. He shouted at the bridge to behave itself. Nothing happened.

Wren put on her tool belt and walked to the river. She studied the bridge for a long time. Then she asked the people what they had.

The carpenter had wood. The blacksmith had nails. The children could carry small stones, and the farmers had strong arms. Even the wizard could make his sparkles shine brightly enough to work by after dark.

Together, plank by plank and stone by stone, they rebuilt the bridge. It took seven days. On the seventh evening, the first cart of carrots rolled safely across.

The whole kingdom cheered. “Princess Wren used magic!” someone shouted.

Wren shook her head and smiled. “No magic,” she said. “Just looking carefully, asking for help and not giving up.”

But the old castle clock, which she had fixed, chimed exactly eight times, and some people still say that was a little bit of magic after all.