The Princess and the (Greedy) Pea, by Leigh Hodgkinson

There was a green pea who swallowed a sprout. Without a doubt, a Brussels sprout. What's that about? Wow, everyone. Episode 500 of our little Podcast! I still remember the first story we recorded, The Owl who was Afraid of the Dark, back in April 2023 & thinking it would be just something for us to listen to, maybe in the car. Then we did a couple more & for some reason a few people were actually listening. An audience of a few hundred then became a few thousand & so we began reading requests & before we knew it we’d been listened over 1 million times, now, astonishingly, nearly 10m!!!   This is just a Dad & his Daughter recording themselves reading books in a little bedroom in England, now with the most lovely community of families & their children enjoying our silly voices & terrible jokes. I’ve run out of ways to explain how endlessly overwhelming the lovely messages we receive are, how kind your feedback is & how incredible it feels knowing we may have made a positive difference to your children’s bedtime, school runs or their enjoyment of reading & discovering new books.   Almost exactly a year today, the podcast was taken down due to unintentional copyright infringement & some rather ridiculous Spotify customer support. After a great deal of effort & stress I managed to get everything uploaded again via another platform (with the exception of one particular author) but I’d almost decided not to & to just accept defeat. But I’m so, so glad I didn’t. Ever since, we’ve connected with, been lucky enough to meet & been able to promote stories from authors who have created the most magical memories & allowed us to share them & with you.   Many of you have listened to us from the beginning, when Lyla was still a toddler & only spoke to say her name. Listening to our most recent episodes & the confidence in her voice, her attempts at funny accents, her observations & imagination as she now reads most of the stories, whilst I listen - that is parenting at its most meaningful.   Thank you all for being part of this wonderful thing & thank you for listening.   What do we say, what do we say….? We say, LET’S READ!   Love Lyla & Dad, (Josh) 🙂