The Story Makers
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The Story Makers is a children's television programme broadcast on the BBC's small children's digital television network, CBeebies. The Story Makers is set in a children’s library, and encourages literacy and creativity.
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[edit] The programme
The programme starts as the library shuts in the evening. At the stroke of midnight, Jelly and Jackson (green and pink puppets who live in the library and hide in the daytime) come out and are joined by a guest presenter, one of the members of the Wordsworth family, who recites "The sun is down, the stars are bright, Story Makers come out at night".
Objects found in the library are put into the top of the story machine (transformed from a desktop computer); Jelly, Jackson and the story maker then recite "Imagine, imagine, imagine a story!"; and the story machine produces a book containing a story based on the object. The story in the book is then "read out" (although this is replaced on screen by live action or an animation). The first story is a Play Book (live action with small children), and the remaining stories are animated (cartoons, stop-motion animation, or puppets). The characters in the stories are fairly consistent, including Sniff and Wag (two puppet dogs), Blue Cow (a cartoon cow), Kevin the Spaceman (puppet), and so on. There is almost always a Blue Cow story and a Play Book--the third story varies.
As dawn breaks, the story maker takes his or her leave ("Dawn is upon us, the morning is nigh, we've made our stories, so 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 find when the library opens in the morning.
[edit] The story makers
The story makers include: The two puppet characters:
- Jackson (voiced by Nick Mercer, who also provides the voice for Blue Cow) - Jackson is pink and porcupine-like
- Jelly (voiced by Aliex Yuill) - green with hair sticking out
and six presenters:
- Milton Wordsworth (played by Danny John-Jules)
- Byron Wordsworth (played by Michael Offei)
- Rossetti Wordsworth (played by Dystin Johnson)
- Shelley Wordsworth (played by Lauretta Nkwocha)
- Blake Wordsworth (played by Paul J Medford)
- Webster Wordsworth (played by Joe Vera)
Each Wordsworth has magical story-making powers.
The Story Makers presenters are all played by Black actors.
The story makers may be named after English poets, William Wordsworth, John Milton, Lord Byron, Dante Rossetti (or possibly Christina Rossetti), Percy Bysshe Shelley (or possibly Mary Shelley), William Blake, and John Webster. It is also possible the surname is also intended as an appropriate literacy pun ("words' worth").
[edit] Trivia
- The librarians seen at the start and end of the programme are played by the actors who provide the voices for Jelly and Jackson.
- Although the Story Makers leave when dawn approaches, the clock in the library winds forward from 12.05am - well before the dawn.
