← Koala Moon: Kids Bedtime Stories & Sleep Stories for Kids Podcast
Koala Moon: Kids Bedtime Stories & Sleep Stories for Kids Podcast
Mumble's Jumbly Storybook 🐘😴 Kids Bedtime Story About Dyslexia
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- [00:11]
Narrator
Hello and welcome back to Koala Moon, a podcast of original children's bedtime stories and meditations designed to make bedtime a dream. Welcome and woohoo to our newest recruit, ember, who turned eight on 17 June. I know how much you love Hector and Sunny, but we wanted to get this out in time for your birthday and we couldn't wait a moment longer. So Coco, the Sleep HQ team and I all hope you had a lovely day yesterday. Before we begin, a quick message for the grown ups. If you'd like to support our podcast, enjoy ad free listening, unlock four bonus stories per month and much, much more. You can join Koko Club. Subscribe in just two taps via the link in the show notes, but now here's a quick word from our sponsors. Hey there Koala Moon listeners. Do you love mystery stories like the ones we solve with our very own sleepy sloth sleuth? Then we think you'll love the podcast Mysteries about True Histories, or Math for short. And guess what? Season two is out now. Max and Molly are two clever kids who use math, history, geography and problem solving to travel through time. And this season they're facing off against a sneaky new villain called the Power Hungry Pogs. Their mission? To rewrite history from ancient Egypt to Charles Darwin in 1875, Max and Molly jump to wherever in time they're needed. Next, with spies hiding in plain sight and secrets around every corner, it's full of fun twists and just about the right amount of mystery for curious kids. You can find mysteries about true histories right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. Happy sleuthing and sweet dreams.
- [02:07]
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This is Elio of Earth. If any aliens are listening, come and.
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- [02:31]
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Disney and Pixar's Elio. Rated pg. Parental guidance suggested only in theaters. Tickets available now.
- [02:38]
Carissa
Hey, parents. I'm Carissa, the host of Sleep Wave, a sleep meditation podcast from the creators of Koala Moon. We understand how much you appreciate the bedtime stories on Koala Moon for your little ones, but as a mother myself, I know that parents need their relaxation time too. With soothing meditations and nostalgic stories, each episode of sleepwave is crafted to help busy minds slow down. So you can wake up feeling well rested tomorrow. Each night I'll guide you to sleep with beautiful visualizations and calming journeys which listeners describe as perfect for drifting off to. Not sure where to start with meditation? Try one of my favorite episodes, A Mental Vacation, where I'll lead you through using your imagination to experience the deep relaxation of a holiday without ever leaving your bedroom. You can discover sleepwave on all major podcast platforms. Simply search sleepwave, Sleep Meditations and Hit follow so you can easily find the show later Tonight, Sweet dreams.
- [03:48]
Narrator
Tonight we are all going together to join Mumbles the Elephant as he reads his little brothers and sisters to sleep. Yep, this is a bedtime story about a bedtime story, although Mumbles has a little bit more difficulty with the job than me because the thing is, he has dyslexia, so he gets a little mixed up sometimes. But wonderful Mumbles doesn't let that get in the way of his job as a big brother, and as you'll hear, he does an excellent job of telling the stories his own way, and they end up more magical than the words printed on the page. OK, first things first. Are you in your PJs and ready for bed? Good. As you lie down and you get snugly under your covers, see if you can bring to mind all of your favourite things. Maybe the faces of friends, your favorite teddy or soft toy, food, pets. All the things that bring a smile to your face as you think about them. And just let all those lovely images play through your mind as you breathe softly and steadily in and out. And as you lie there all relaxed, calm and happy, I will get started with Mumbles the Elephant's Jumbly Storybook by Jane Thomas. Mumbles the Elephant lives with his family in the very north of Sleepy Forest, the jungly part where there are huge pools of mud for them to slosh about in, and rivers for them to play in, and vast plains for them to roam. His cousin Cooper lives there too. And if you're one of those people with an extraordinary memory, perhaps you will remember Cooper the Elephant, who is sort of a magician and sort of a comedian and likes to wear a little red hat perched on the very top of his head. There are two facts about elephants that you should know. The first is that very famously, elephants never ever forget. Show them something once and they will remember it forever. This is partly why many elephants can speak five or six or even seven or eight languages. They're also very good at sums, and they always remember exactly how many cookies were left in the jar so they can tell the moment one goes missing, the second is that female elephants are always in charge. Always. The oldest female elephant around is the one who sets the rules. So grandmothers and great grandmothers and aunts and great aunts are extremely important to elephants. If your grandmother tells you to sit down and behave yourself and you happen to be an elephant, you do it, no questions asked. But another thing about elephants, and this is one I'm guessing you didn't know because you've probably never met an elephant you can read. But of the ones who can, many are dyslexic. Funnily enough, about 1 in every 10 people are dyslexic, and that number is exactly the same for elephants. For every 10 magical reading elephants you come across, one of them will be dyslexic. In case you've never heard the word before, dyslexia basically means someone finds it a bit harder than others to read and spell. If you look at a page in a book and you don't have dyslexia, the words do basically what they're supposed to do. They stay there where they were put, and they do as they're told, behaving themselves like reasonable, acceptable words. But if you look at the same page and you have dyslexia, the words and the letters all sort of get up and go for a bit of a wander. So they don't always make sense, and it's really difficult to. To get them all to go and stand where they're meant to for long enough for entire words and sentences to be read. So there you go. That's three facts about elephants. And come to that, three facts about our new friend, Mumbles. He has an insanely good memory. He can tell you what he had for breakfast exactly three years ago, if you're interested in that sort of thing. And he has a great grandmother called Elsa, who he loves and adores more than anyone and who is very much in charge of his whole family. And when he tries to read a book, the words go swimming about on the page. On this particular evening, Elsa is feeling really very tired indeed. She spent the day having a good old soak in the mud, sinking deep down into the pool so only the very tip of her trunk is above the surface. And after that, she went for a good long swim in the river, washing all the mud away from every crevice and wrinkle on her thick grey elephant skin. She visited the spa, where a couple of oxpecker birds polished and shined her tusks until they gleamed in the late Evening sun. And now she just wants to fall asleep on the veranda, listening to the last notes of the cicadas as the sun settles down over the horizon. Elsa is on one of those swinging porch chairs that's all covered in padded cushions and she's rocking gently back and forth to and fro, using her trunk to push off from the wall when the swinging almost comes to a stop. She's supposed to read the littlest ones their bedtime story, but after her lovely afternoon, she's yawning huge elephant yawns and is so very, very tired. She doesn't really have the energy, she thinks to herself. Then here comes Mumbles, trotting across the veranda to say goodnight to her. And along with him comes a very good idea. Mumbles, she says, her eyes slipping closed as she speaks, I do believe it's your turn to read the bedtime stories tonight. Yes, yes, I'm quite sure it is. You'll do a wonderful job, I just know you will. And with that, she turned on her side and let out a long, blissful, contented sigh followed by a rumbling elephant sized snore. Mumbles opens and closes his mouth a few times as if he wants to argue, although of course he wouldn't. What his grandmother says goes. It's as simple as that. She's very wise, you see. It's worth listening to Her Mumbles walks slowly towards the bedroom where his youngest brothers and sisters sleep. By now they'll have cleaned their teeth and tusks, both equally important to an elephant, and slipped into their beds. And they'll be lying there, heads on pillows, blankets pulled up to their chins, trunks curled up all cosy and warm, waiting to be lulled to sleep by a bedtime story. There's a fourth fact about elephants I should have told you earlier, possibly more than any other animal in the world. Even the ones like sloths who like to sleep almost every hour of the day and night. Elephants adore, they absolutely adore bedtime stories. As Mumbles walks in, he sees the rocking chair at the end of the room is ready and waiting for him. Well, it's ready and waiting for his grandmother Elsa, really, but she's fast asleep on the porch outside, so he's here in her place. A single lamp is glowing on a low table beside the rocking chair and there's a cushion for him to lean against and a soft blanket the colour of the sky to pull over his knees. Mumble sees that his younger brothers and sisters, all five of them, have chosen books and placed them on the chair, waiting for them to be read aloud. Mumbles picks up the first book and smiles to himself as he looks at the COVID There's the familiar image of a rabbit in a little blue jacket. And even though the letters are swimming all over the place, Mumbles remembers the story by heart. He must have heard it a hundred times. And before he opens the book, he confidently tells the little listening elephants that he will be reading from the tale of Peter Rabbit written by Beatrix Potter. As he turns the pages and looks at the pictures, all the words come rushing back to him, and Mumbles relaxes into the story, relating the tale of Peter and Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, and how they go into Mr. McGregor's garden and then race back home to the safety of their burrow. As he reaches the final page and softly announces the end, Mumbles hears a contented sigh from his very littlest sister, who turns over in her bed and whispers, thank you, Mum Morse. That was wonderful. Good night. And the rustle of the blanket is followed by the tiniest elephant snores rumbling over from her corner of the room. Mumbles reaches over for the second book and again smiles, feeling relieved as he looks at the picture on the COVID It shows a boy in a red jacket climbing up a beanstalk, and Mumbles softly says that now he's going to read aloud the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, first told by, nobody really knows, a terribly long time ago. And just as before, as Mumbles turned each page, he looked at the pictures and his wonderful elephant memory remembered the story word for word that he must have heard a hundred times. So he told the tale of the boy who sold the cow and bought the magic beans and climbed up a giant beanstalk. And as he reached the final page and softly announced the end, his very littlest brother turned over in his bed and whispered, thank you, Mumbles, that was wonderful. Good night. And the blanket rustled and his trunk went first this way and then that, and then the gentlest little elephant snores came drifting out of that corner of the room. You can imagine how relieved Mumbles felt when he picked up the next book and he saw on the COVID a tin man and a lion and a man made of straw and a girl wearing red shoes that gleamed and sparkled. And he softly announced that now he was going to read the story of the Wonderful wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum. The rocking chair Mumble sat in was by the bedroom window, and just outside on the porch was his grandmother Elsa, swinging to and Fro on her cosy bench. For a moment, she stumbled out of her dream and heard Mumbles announce that he would now begin the story all about Dorothy and how she followed a yellow brick road. Elsa smiled to herself as Mumbles started to tell the tale, and she thought how she must have read it to him a hundred times and how good it was that he had such a wonderful memory and could remember it word for word. Now, Mumbles was extremely lucky three times because he knew the stories of Peter Rabbit and Jack and the Beanstalk and the Wonderful wizard of Oz by heart. It didn't matter that the words and letters were dancing on the pages and not behaving themselves at all. One look at the pictures and he was instantly back in the stories. The fourth story was much more difficult for him, though. It was a book he'd never seen before, and even though he screwed up his eyes and turned the book upside down and tried shaking it to get the letters to fall into place, he really couldn't work out what the letters were trying to tell him. Fortunately for Mumbles, the brother who had chosen the book didn't know the story either, so he was more than happy with the version Mumbles told. Mumbles looked at images of a boy living in a jungle, surrounded by a black panther and a big bear and walking along with a baby elephant, an even smaller elephant than his very littlest sister, and made up a story about the boy swinging through the trees and eating the jungle fruits and dancing in the rain. He talked about him dancing with monkeys and climbing to the highest branches of trees to reach for the yellowest bananas and shimmying up palms where he grabbed the biggest coconuts. Mumbles made up stories of the boy running with wolves one moment and riding the back of the panther the next, racing through the shadows of the jungle there one moment and gone the next. He had the boy dancing with the bear, laughing and talking and high fiving as they shimmied their way along a jungle path and used great looping vines to swing and leap into clear blue pools that sparkled with diamonds as waterfalls poured into them. And his brother, who had never heard the story, fell in love with the book he knew to be the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. And he couldn't wait to read it again, although when he did read it the next day, he wasn't quite sure when he had fallen asleep, because the story wasn't exactly as he remembered Mumbles telling it. After that, there was just one little brother still awake. But the final book proved impossible for Mumbles There was a plain green cover with gold lettering that danced and swayed, and when he opened it up to see the pictures and follow the story that way, he saw that there were no pictures at all, just words and letters that misbehaved even more badly than in all the previous books put together. Umm, said Mumbles uncertainly. Um, he added, not quite sure what to do. He scratched his head with the tip of his trunk, and in a flash he had an idea. Dyslexic people might not always be able to read or spell particularly well, but more often than not they more than make up for this by having brilliant imaginations. Plus they often think a little bit differently and come up with some extraordinary ideas. Bubbles, he whispered to the last brother who was still awake waiting for his story to be read to him. Hmm, said Bubbles, who was only awake to hear his story but was feeling really very, very tired indeed and almost on the brink of falling asleep. Do you mind, Bubbles, if I tell you a different story? Asked Mumbles. Can it be a story about a castle? Said Bubbles. Mumbles said it could. And can it have a boat in it? Said Bubbles. Mumbles agreed that it absolutely must have a boat in the story. And can Granny Elsa be in this story too? Said Bubbles. Outside on the porch, Elsa smiled to herself. She had been about to fall asleep again, but perhaps she would stay awake to hear what Mumbles conjured up about a castle and a boat. And herself, of course, said Mumbles. And so he sat on the rocking chair with the soft blanket. The colour of the sky poured up over his knees and leaned back and closed his eyes and began to tell the story. Once upon a time there was an elderly elephant called Elsa. She was the wisest, most wonderful elephant in all the world, and she decided to take a trip to a place she had never been before. Elsa had walked as far north as the world allowed and as far south as anyone ever had. She had walked to the east, towards the rising of the sun, and west, to follow the sunset as it settled down to sleep over the horizon. She had climbed to the top of the highest mountain and looked out on the valleys and rivers below, and she had walked across deserts and through jungles and in the biggest cities and the smallest villages of the world. But one place Elsa had never been was across the sea. So she decided to go to the harbour and ask a fisherman if she could borrow his boat. The fisherman said she was more than welcome, but first she must help him empty all the fish she had caught that morning. And so she hauled with her trunk and picked up the heavy baskets of shining silver fish and placed them gently on the harbour wall. A long line of silver that shimmered in the light of the sun. And then the fisherman cast off the rope and waved her goodbye. And Elsa raised the red sails and turned, so she was heading straight out to sea. It was the most perfect calm day, with just enough breeze for the little wooden boat to ease itself across the waters, but not enough for there to be any waves. Dolphins danced alongside the boat and Elsa lay back and turned her face to the sun. She had no idea where she was going or what she wanted to find, but she just knew somehow, that the little wooden boat would guide her to a magical place. She sailed for hour after hour, seeing nothing at all. And then, there in the distance, she saw something start to appear. As she drew closer and closer, she realised that it was a single jutting rock. And perched on top of the rock was a very tall, very narrow castle made of brilliant white stone, from when she first saw it to when she finally drew alongside the tiniest golden beach. It took almost an entire hour of sailing, the castle growing taller and taller with every minute that passed. Then Elsa was there with the boat, pulled up onto the beach, looking up at this castle that seemed as if it must reach to the very top of the sky. The door was open, and Elsa supposed that there probably wasn't much passing traffic all the way out here at sea, and so it didn't matter about locking the door, but to be polite, she closed it behind her. She wiped her feet on the mat, removing the sand and the salt of the sea, and then started her way up a staircase that wound around and around every 30 steps or so. There was a window made of coloured glass, and so the stairway was filled with different coloured lights that shone onto the bright white stones. So one moment it felt as if she was walking up steps made of rubies, and the next she was treading on a staircase carved from emeralds. At one point it became dark for a moment and Elsa looked out to see that she was in the middle of a passing cloud. So high had she gone in the castle on the rock, in the sea. And then she was above the cloud and the sky was blue once more, so very blue. And still the stairs wrapped around and around the tower. And finally, just as she was wishing there was some place she could sit and rest, she came to the room at the very top of the tower, feeling as if she had reached the edge of the sky. In the centre stood a huge red chair Plump and deep. And on it was folded a soft blanket the colour of the sky. Before Elsa sank into the chair, she went over to the wall to read the single notice that was on there. In this chair, the sign said. Every great writer for hundreds and hundreds of years has sat and in this chair they have conjured up the greatest stories the world has ever known. They have solved the most curious mysteries and danced with dragons and soared with eagles. They have dreamed up the most wonderful characters and created worlds so magical they have lived inside them for years. Take your turn in the chair and create your story. Mumbles opened his eyes and looked over to see if his brother was asleep, yet. Bubbles was lying there, his eyes drooping, but he was just about awake. Mumbles, he whispered, do you believe the castle's really there? Mumbles thought about it for a moment. Yes, he whispered, I do. Bubbles smiled. Me too, he said as he curled up his trunk and added his gentle elephant snores to the others in the room. Outside on the porch, Elsa smiled to herself. Me too, she whispered into the quiet of the night. It perhaps isn't surprising that all three of them had the very same dream that night. All three of them dreamed that they sailed on a little wooden boat across the bluest of seas with dolphins dancing alongside and leaping through the waves, and came across a castle made of the brightest, whitest stone that reached to the very top of the sky. All three of them climbed the steps that wrapped around and around the inside of the tower, with light pouring in through coloured glass windows, so it seemed they were walking on stairs made from rubies and emeralds. And all three of them reached the room at the very top and sank down into a deep red chair, pulling the softest blanket the colour of the sky around themselves. And of course, all three of them wrote stories as they sat in that magic chair. For we are all dreamers. We are all makers of magic. We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams. Wandering by lone sea breakers and and sitting by desolate streams, world losers and world forsakers on whom the pale moon gleams. Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world forever, it seems.