Great fun for kids of all ages, these two short stories are not traditional fairytales but like most fairytales, they offer lessons for life, with a little magic and darkness thrown in. The first story, 'Word Queen', tells the tale of a Panda who discovers the secret of words on a journey through a magical land. 'Black Eye' meanwhile, is a simple rites-of-passage story about a boy's quest to find the truth behind the bruise around his eye.

If you or your children want to be entertained and educated by stories filled with magic and strangeness, and introduced to worlds of Pandas,Words, Black Eyes, Adventures, Quests and Travelling Fools, then you should read these 'Two New Fairytales' today.

Flora the Panda lived in a village in the middle of a forest. It was a pretty village, filled with every kind of bear you could possibly imagine. There were grizzly bears brown bears, polar bears and even koala bears but poor Flora was the only panda.

Of course that made her very special, but it also made her feel quite lonely. You see, it was also very quiet in the village because Flora and the other bears didn't know how to talk.

That was why she often wandered out into the forest to listen to all the wonderful noises she heard there. She loved the sounds made by the leaves on the trees as the breeze blew. That wasn't her favourite sound though. What she loved the most were the noises coming from the river that was in the middle of the forest.

More and more often, Flora would lie down by the riverbank just to relax and listen. She soon found that the sound of leaves, the roar of running water, the splashes and the bubbling had become her friends. And when she was with her new friends, Flora felt much less alone.

It still seemed like there was something missing. As she stared across the river, she wondered what was on the other side. Flora stood with all her favourite noises and she was sure she heard them telling her to go and find out.

So, that's exactly what she did and it wasn't long before she reached the other side. She shook the water out of her fur and noticed how quiet everything had become. She shook herself again to try to get any water out of her ears. It didn't do any good though. The quietness of her village had returned.

That was when she saw something that looked interesting. It was a path through the forest and Flora wanted to know where it would take her. So, she followed the way that was laid out for her and soon found that it was the quickest and easiest way out of the forest.

When all the trees were behind her, she only saw two things ahead. The first was a wooden sign attached to a post, with nothing written or drawn onto it. The other thing was three letters, an ‘F’, an ‘O’ and an ‘R’, all lying together on the ground. Flora stared very closely at the letters and tried to make sense of these odd things she'd never seen before.

Then something strange happened. Suddenly, Flora started to understand. From out of nowhere a sound took shape in her mouth. Forming from her breath, she read the word:
“For.”