Children't Book for Drama Class

I need some help in deciding on a story or children’s book to use for the drama class I am teaching for our co-op this semester.  First let me explain what I plan to do with it;  I have about 30 kids (if they all keep coming) and I plan on doing some lessons with all the kids but for some of it I have to split the group and have a helper with one group, especially for the games, otherwise we will never get done in an hour. 

What I want to do is find a book/story with 5 or 6 characters in it, long enough that I can split it into five or six sections, then I am going to split the entire group into 5 or 6 sections of 5 kids (again, depending on how many keep coming), then, each section is going to act out one of the sections of the story.  So in reality if I did Cinderella for example; I would have 5 (or 6) Cinderellas’ and 5 Princes’.  Does this make sense?  Anyway; I need help finding a story that I can use.  The age range of the kids is 6 to 16 but I plan on using a younger children’s story and hope that the older ones can have fun with it too.