About Arabian Nights for Kids
Arabian Nights for Kids retells the whole of One Thousand and One Nights for children, one night at a time, in 12 languages. Two new nights are published every day, in the same order as the book.
Who we are
The site is a project of Mandato Agency. The stories are retold by Shahid Ali (LinkedIn), who sets the rules every story must follow and is responsible for what we publish.
The book we retell
Every night starts from Richard F. Burton's English translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885). It is in the public domain, it keeps the book's division into 1,001 nights, and anyone can read it free on Project Gutenberg. Each of our nights names the volume it comes from and links to it.
How each night is made
- Read the source. We read the night in Burton's translation before writing a word.
- Retell for children. We keep the plot, characters and setting, and soften or leave out what is not right for ages 6 to 12, as our guide for parents explains.
- Check the facts. Facts about real places and history in our wiki and book guide come from named sources, linked on each page.
- Translate. Each night is translated into Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Indonesian, Turkish, Persian and Bengali.
- Illustrate. Every picture is drawn for this site. People wear the clothes and live in the buildings of the time and place the story is set in, such as Sasanian Persia for the opening story.
We use Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, to help write, translate and illustrate each night, always following these rules and always from the original text.
Corrections
If you find a mistake, or something that should not be in a children's story, please tell us through the Mandato Agency contact page. We correct errors and note the date on the page.
Privacy
No ads, no sign-ups, no comments and no tracking cookies. We do not collect personal information from children. Our privacy policy explains the details, and our editorial policy sets out every rule we follow.