The Story Makers


The Story Makers is a British children's television programme that was broadcast on the BBC's pre-school digital television network, CBeebies. The Story Makers is set in a children's library, and encourages literacy and creativity.

Programme

The programme is set in a library that comes to life at night, where the puppets Jelly and Jackson and a member of the Wordsworth family create stories using a “Story Machine”. At the stroke of midnight, Jackson and Jelly come out and are joined by a presenter who recites "The sun is down, the stars are bright, Story Makers come out at night.” as they appear. The Wordsworths together with Jelly and Jackson are the Story Makers.
Objects found in the library or appear by magic are put into the top of the story machine ; Jelly, Jackson and the story maker then recite "Imagine, imagine, imagine a story!" and the story machine makes a book containing a story based on the object. The story in the book is then "read out". The stories that appear are a Playbook and the remaining stories are animated. The characters in the stories are fairly consistent, including Sniff and Wag, Blue Cow and Kevin the Spaceman and his dog, Spanner. There is always a Blue Cow story and a Playbook – the other story varies between each episode.
As dawn begins and the sun rises, the Story Maker takes his or her leave and recites "Dawn is upon us, the morning is nigh, we've made our stories and we bid you goodbye!" and disappears. Jelly and Jackson hide and the story machine turns back into a computer, but the books produced overnight remain for the librarian and children to find when the library opens at 9am. From Series 2 to 4, Jelly and Jackson sometimes look at what the kids or the librarian are doing during the credits and hide to make it look like they are invisible to the humans.

Characters

Wordsworth Family Members

The main live action presenters are the Wordsworths:
  • Milton Wordsworth – Played by Danny John-Jules.
  • Byron Wordsworth – Played by Michael Offei.
  • Shelley Wordsworth – Played by Lauretta Nkwocha.
  • Rossetti Wordsworth – Played by Dystin Johnson.
  • Webster Wordsworth – Played by Joe Vera.
  • Blake Wordsworth – Played by Paul J. Medford.
In Series 1, Milton Wordsworth was the only live action presenter.

Others

  • The Librarian.
  • Children in the library.
  • Playbook children.
  • Blue Cow – Appears in all of the episodes where she is always curious about the world outside her farm.

    Puppets

The show also featured two puppets:
  • Jackson – A pink horse who is the adoptive big brother to Jelly. He is six years old and wears pink velcros.
  • Jelly – A green porcupine with long quills, who is Jackson's adopted younger sister. She is three years old.
The puppets have also appeared on CBeebies Springwatch and CBeebies Autumnwatch. Jelly was also a recurring character in Green Balloon Club.
In December 2007, Jelly & Jackson appeared as contestants on a puppet special of The Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson which was originally broadcast on Friday 28 December 2007 at 18:00pm GMT on BBC One, they were voted off after Round 6.

Home media releases

In 2004, two VHS tapes and DVDs containing episodes from the first series were released by the Contender Entertainment Group under license from the BBC. The first volume contained five episodes from the series, and the second release was a "Bumper Special", featuring ten episodes, five on each VHS tape/DVD.

Stories

Each episode features a Playbook segment with real children and a Blue Cow story, alongside a rotating selection of other animated or puppet story strands such as Kevin the Spaceman and Barnacle Rock. The other story rotates from the list below:
  • Kevin the Spaceman – Stories about Spaceman Kevin and his dog Spanner visiting various planets.
  • Sniff and Wag – Stories about dogs Sniff and Wag who visit a park at night.
  • Barnacle Rock – Stories about sea creatures finding something on the ocean floor.
  • Jack Sprat and Treacle Cat – Stories about Jack Sprat, a rat, and his friend Treacle Cat who live in a garbage bin.
  • Tales from Faraway – Stories, original and traditional, that use shadow puppets.
  • The Poons – Stories about various kitchen tools and appliances.
  • Super Baby – Stories about a baby superhero.
  • The Three Bears – A subversion of Goldilocks and the Three Bears where the Bears are visited by someone other than Goldilocks. Every story ends with Mother Bear putting something new on her porridge.
  • Rainforest Tales – Stories about the adventures of animals in a rainforest.