Cautionary Tales for Children

Cautionary Tales for Children: Designed for the Admonition of Children between the ages of eight and fourteen years is a 1907 children's book written by Hilaire Belloc. It is a parody of the cautionary tales that were popular in the 19th century. The work is in the public domain in the United States.

Illustrated by Belloc's friend from Oxford Basil Temple Blackwood, it is similar in style to the The Bad Child's Book of Beasts which had brought Belloc public acclaim and commercial success a decade earlier. The book contains an introduction and eleven tales, all written in rhyming couplets.

Four of the Cautionary Tales were set to music by Liza Lehmann in 1909; the famous contralto Clara Butt sang the piece in a successful tour of Britain in the same year. The British actor Stephen Fry recorded a selection of the verses as an audiobook in 1992, and the American artist Edward Gorey (1925–2000) created 61 new illustrations for the book, which were published posthumously in 2002. Pink Floyd writer and singer Syd Barrett used the book as the basis for the song "Matilda Mother" from the 1967 album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.