A fable from the Panchatantra, retold for children in our own words. The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian collection of animal stories traditionally attributed to the scholar Vishnu Sharma. This story comes from Book 1: The loss of friends.
A hungry jackal was wandering through the forest, looking for food. Suddenly he heard a terrible noise: BOOM… BOOM… BOOM! It rolled across the trees like thunder.
The jackal’s fur stood on end. “That must be a giant beast,” he thought. “If it sees me, it will gobble me up.” He wanted to run away as fast as he could.
But then he stopped. “Running away will not fill my tummy,” he said to himself. “And I do not even know what is making the noise. I will creep closer and look.”
Slowly, quietly, he tiptoed towards the sound. There, under a tree, was an old battle drum left behind by soldiers. When the wind blew, a branch swung against it: BOOM!
The jackal laughed out loud. “So this is my giant beast! It is big and noisy, but it cannot hurt anyone.” He tapped the drum with his paw. Boom, it answered politely.
From that day on, whenever something frightened him, the jackal remembered the drum. He took a deep breath, looked carefully, and very often found there was nothing to fear.
The moral of the story
Do not be scared by noise alone. Look closely and find out the truth before you run.
Talk about it
- Why did the jackal want to run away at first?
- What made him brave enough to look?
- Has something ever seemed scary until you found out what it really was?
Tips for reading aloud
- Use a different voice for each animal.
- Pause before the turning point and ask, “What do you think happens next?”
- Open the picture book and press Read to me to hear it read aloud, with the pages turning by themselves.
More fables: the Panchatantra bookshelf.
