Back in 2020, I was contacted, out of the blue, by Darren Prescott, a member of the Story Teller Facebook group. He told me he had been writing some songs featuring Timbertwig and his friends and would I like to hear them? Of course my interest was piqued, and he sent me a couple of songs. It was clear to me that Darren was a talented composer, and performer, so I suggested he send me some more ideas.

Time passed, and Darren continued to send me more songs, with the hope of producing a musical, possibly for schools to perform. I could certainly hear the potential, but all we had was a set of songs, with no narrative at all. I reckoned that a full blown musical was a bit too ambitious to begin with, and that we should walk, before attempting to run, with a musical audio book. Sort of a concept album for kids, if there is such a thing.

At this point, I decided that if we were to produce such an ambitious idea, we would need more help. I asked Peter Jones, who has narrated my stories before, and who is an amazing musician and singer, plus Antonio Pineda, ( aka Brilly Ant ) who is the font of all knowledge relating to Story Teller. (A specialist subject for Mastermind surely beckons one day.)

Fortunately, both agreed, wholeheartedly, and so the journey began. My main stumbling block was how to make the songs work within a story structure. Two flashes of inspiration came to me, one of which came about through a conversation with Peter Jones, and the writing process began. Thankfully, everyone involved loved the story, and so we began, with me producing the illustrations, Darren completing the songs, Peter handling the narration, plus providing numerous pieces of incidental music to tie the soundtrack together, and Ant, who would create a new website and look after the Facebook announcements and produce the flip book.

Well, I had no idea what a challenge we had embarked upon. The endless late night messages, toing and froing with ideas. It was all wonderful fun, working together with three, distant strangers, all just inspiring each other to produce the best work we could.

This was to be a labour of love between like minded people who were driven by a passion for children’s stories.

I am so, so proud, of what we have achieved, and I hope the Story Teller members enjoy this new venture, as much as we had in creating it.

Peet Ellison