The Story of the Fisherman

From The Arabian Nights Entertainments, collected by Andrew Lang

This story comes from The Arabian Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled over centuries and first published in English in the eighteenth century. Andrew Lang retold many of these tales for young readers. The fisherman's encounter with the genie teaches the power of quick thinking when strength alone cannot save you. This is a frame tale: the fisherman's threat to tell a story (about the Greek king and the physician Douban) introduces the next tale in the sequence, but his cleverness in trapping the genie makes a complete story on its own. This text reflects its era; a few period terms have been modernised.

Band

Green · Independent readers, early, about 8 to 10

Length

medium · about 788 words in 5 sections · 3 pictures

Source

The Arabian Nights Entertainments, Andrew Lang · Project Gutenberg

First published

see the About page in the reader

Regions

Canada · United States

Included formats

• · Web reader and PDF
• · EPUB for e-readers
• · Home-print sheet
• · Folded booklet
• · Binder edition (8.5 × 11)
• · Worksheet
• · Quick Check (10 questions) with answer key
• · Read-aloud script

Readers are engineered from the original public-domain text with AI under HummingRead’s published canon and Content Philosophy, checked by automated audit and sampled by a person. Pictures are made with AI to HummingRead’s brief for each story. How a reader is made.