Welcome!

Here are some short bedtime stories for kids, roughly in the age range of 4-11 (yes, yes, such a large suggested age range may not seem much use, but different ages get different things out of the stories), or younger ones over here, to be read aloud by a grown up to help with the occasional long word. The stories are available for free, and are ad-free, but please Please PLEASE give me some feedback (good or bad, anonymously, briefly, verbosely, doesn’t matter,  just let me know).

There is a potted history of how Moose & Goose came to be, but all you really need to know is:

Somewhere, there is a seaside town where there is an office with a door on which a sign says,

Moose & Goose
Private Investigators
 and  Solvers of Tricky Problems

No problem is too big or too small,
too difficult or too easy,
too weird or too obvious.

And so, to the stories. There are tricky problems to solve…

  • Pin The Tail On The Hippo (1185 words) <– START HERE

    “I have a problem. I own a zoo in town, as you know, and it’s been getting a bit quiet. Not many people are visiting. They seem a bit bored with it. We want to do a re-launch, generate lots of publicity, get more people to visit. You know the sort of thing. We need a theme, something interesting, something exciting, something that will get this town buzzing.”

  • Perfect Custard (2477 words)

    “I own a luxury confectionery factory, which makes really rich and gooey cakes for the cake shops and cafés in the town. One gooey thing we make a lot of is custard. This morning we started to make a batch of our best, most expensive, deluxe vanilla custard, but something has gone wrong.”

  • Squirt Splat Tumble Splash Gulp (1419 words)

    “The pygmy hippos are being attacked by nasty, bitey, buzzy flies. They don’t like it. We don’t like it. The visitors don’t like it. And we are out of ideas. Can you help?”

  • Sunburn Emergency (1856 words)

    “Our problem is this: the town hospital is full of people with bad sunburn. We have no beds left to treat any more people. The sunburn is entirely avoidable.”

  • Crushed Pastries (1770 words)

    As they were walking from the tower, they saw a group of people bunched together, looking up at the tower. One of those people had a big video camera on their shoulder. Another was using a drawing board, sketching a picture of the tower. One wore a beret, and shouted at everyone else in the group.

  • Lunch Mayhem (1111 words)

    “The dinner ladies keep trying to promote the healthy food, reminding the pupils as they choose. We’ve had advertising campaigns. We’ve had special lessons. Oh, we’ve tried pretty much everything, and they still go for pizza and chips and beans.”

  • Burj Al Camel (2363 words)

    “Zis is not just a normal infestation of ants. We appear to be an ant magnet. None of ze usual solutions work. Our local pest control experts are at a loss. Can you ‘elp?”

  • Spaghetti In Your Tree (2048 words)

    Last week was busy, this week was quiet. No work to do; no-one calling; no challenging puzzles to solve; nothing.

Total Word Count: 14229 …

Sammy Seagull and Percy Penguin: The early years of industrial espionage

… more to come

These stories all follow the same theme. There are no pictures. Imaginations are essential. Participation is encouraged, especially in the brainstorming sections (where ‘…’ means the audience is meant to contribute). Feedback is begged for.

There is no commercial printing of these stories (yet). They can be read out quite satisfactorily from a smartphone, or a tablet. In fact, field studies have shown that the gently glowing screen in a darkened room works really well, adding a sense of drama.