Our Editorial Policy
Last updated 25 October 2026.
Parents and teachers should know exactly where a children's story comes from and who is responsible for it. These are the rules every page on Arabian Nights for Kids follows.
Who is responsible
The stories are retold by Shahid Ali for Mandato Agency. He wrote these rules and is responsible for everything we publish. We take no money from sponsors or advertisers, so no one else has a say in what a story contains.
One source, followed in order
Every night is retold from one book: Richard F. Burton's English translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1885). It is in the public domain and keeps the book's division into 1,001 nights. We publish the nights in the same order as the book. Each night page names the volume it comes from and links to the original text on Project Gutenberg, so anyone can compare.
What we keep
We keep the events, the characters, the places and the order of the story, and we stop each night where Scheherazade stops. We never add events, characters, magic or endings that are not in the book.
What we soften or leave out
Burton translated the book for adults. For readers aged 6 to 12 we:
- tell danger, battles and punishments simply, with no frightening detail;
- tell romance as "they loved each other" or "they were married";
- leave out drinking, and old descriptions of people by skin colour, religion or background;
- say plainly, when a story depends on it, that buying and selling people was cruel and wrong;
- respect every faith in the book, and never draw any prophet.
Our guide for parents explains these choices in more detail.
Facts about the real world
Stories only contain what the book says. Real facts about history, places and the book itself go in our wiki and book guide, and each one comes from a named source with a link.
How a night is made
- Read the night in Burton's translation.
- Retell it in short sentences and everyday words.
- Check it with our own checking tool, which tests length, links, pictures, required sections and our style rules.
- Translate it into 11 more languages, written to read naturally, using the same names in every night.
- Illustrate it with original drawings made for this site, showing the clothes and buildings of the story's time and place.
How we use AI
We use Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, to help write, translate and illustrate each night. It works from the original text and follows these rules. We say this openly because readers have a right to know how the pages are made.
Corrections
If you find a mistake, or something that should not be in a children's story, please contact us. We fix errors as quickly as we can and update the date on the page. Every night and wiki page also has a "Report a problem" link, and our content disclaimer explains what can go wrong.
Pictures and sound
Every drawing is made for this site. The narrator uses a voice on your own device, and the sound effects are made by your browser, so no recordings of real people are used.