Big little stories for bedtime imaginations.
500 Words’ Bedtime Stories turns competition entries into polished audio stories, with playful framing, dramatic readings, and themes like friendship, adventure, teamwork, and determination. It suits families who want short, vivid fiction with enough silliness, heart, and suspense to keep bedtime from feeling routine.
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500 Words’ Bedtime Stories is a showcase for children’s fiction with a proper sense of occasion. The stories come from the 500 Words competition, but the episodes are shaped like lively audio collections rather than classroom readings. Each one has a theme. Friendship, happy endings, teamwork, adventure, determination, giggles, and thrills all become doors into very different miniature worlds. The show is playful from the start, often using Dick and Dom’s comic setups as a springboard. Those openings can involve spy camp, potions, computer games, mountain expeditions, or an unlikely plan to become a trapeze artist. Then the young writers take over. Their stories can be sweet, strange, dramatic, or sharply funny, sometimes all within a few minutes. Patch the puppy’s search for belonging sits beside a mock impeachment letter to a family prime minister. A bus driver’s daily route becomes an act of environmental protest. A child meets a tiny resident inside a loose tooth. Grandma Jo’s knitting habit gets wonderfully out of hand. Other pieces reach for bigger emotions, including loneliness, grief, courage, displacement, and fear of a damaged future. The result is not one single bedtime mood. It has jokes, jeopardy, tenderness, and bursts of wild invention. The BBC Radio Drama Company readings help the stories land with clarity and pace. They keep the childlike imagination intact while making the listening experience feel polished. The closing writing tips from Oxford University Press give the series a second purpose. Young listeners hear stories, then get practical ideas about characters, titles, observation, memory, and sensory detail. That makes the show especially strong for families with children who already make up stories, or who might start after hearing what other young writers have created. Its charm comes from taking children’s ideas seriously without making them solemn.
Made for: Best for children and families who like short fiction, gentle comedy, dramatic readings, and bedtime listening with more energy than a lullaby. It also suits young writers looking for story prompts and craft tips.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is the mix of child-authored imagination, professional performance, and practical writing advice. It treats young writers’ ideas as the main event, from tender animal stories to surreal comic set pieces and miniature adventures.
Bedtime stories for kids, written by kids. A selection of sensational stories from the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show 500 Words competition.
A tiny tenant lives in a loose tooth; your bedtime crowd can decide whether to believe him.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A socially distanced showcase of winning stories, anchored by Pat the rabbit's tender reunion.
The 500 Words Final turns a socially distanced laptop message into a warm showcase for the 2020 competition's winning stories. It begins with the hosts adjusting to life inside little rectangles, then broadens into something more ceremonial with the news that 134,709 children…
Warm, practical friendship gives these bedtime stories small, funny lessons in looking after one another.
Friendship comes through here as something practical, not just cosy. One friend gives up a flight over London to help someone who is poorly, stressed, and moving house, then adds the comfort of a hot toddy with extra honey.
Young writers turn loose teeth, woollen furniture, and a computer-game mishap into a playful bedtime collection.
This bedtime collection brings together stories by young writers, letting everyday worries tip into odd, lively little worlds. A countdown circles fleeting figures and an operations base, Matthew finds that a small man has been living inside his tooth, and Grandma Jo has swapped…
A playful spy-camp opening turns into a comic bus detour through a threatened nature reserve.
Spy camp gives this bedtime story its first spark, as Dom and his companion arrive with paper bags over their heads, trying to work out where they are and whether staying quiet is enough to count as secret-agent behavior.
Finalist stories move from Mars danger to stormy seas and a friendship changed by song.
Dick and Dom frame this finalist-story collection as a lively expedition, sending young listeners from a struggling Earth toward Mars, onto a storm-tossed ship, and into the bright friendship of Dalia Ding and Diego Dong.
Kid requests become bedtime adventures.
World folktales told with warmth and wonder.
Original mysteries by night-light glow.
Storybook adventures for small, vivid imaginations.
Dick and Dom frame the 500 Words Final 2020 with a laptop message, a Zoom-party setup, and the stat that 134,709 children entered the competition this year.
500 Words’ Bedtime Stories mixes friendship tales with a series of short children’s stories, opening with a move-day favor, then Mbali’s overnight trip by the river, and Alex Picton’s spy competition in Derry.
BBC Radio 2’s 500 Words Bedtime Stories episode “Happy Endings” moves through several young-writer tales, including a school lunch countdown with Olcott, a Year 6 “GROWING UP” talk at Ashwood Primary School, and Matthew’s “wobbly tooth” meeting a tiny tenant inside his tooth.
Dick and Dom frame “Teamwork Makes The Dream Work!” as a spy-camp mission, then introduce a series of 500 Words stories delivered as part of their “brand new selection.” Rory and the Giant Bloomers puts a talking T-Rex, old Mrs Bird, and a giant pair of red-and-white bloomers into the same fire rescue.
BBC Radio 2’s 500 Words Bedtime Stories bundles several finalist tales into one episode, including a Mars mission, a kangaroo jump to the moon, and a feud on planet Bell.
A children's bedtime story podcast featuring a story about a character preparing to audition as a trapeze artist in a circus.
A children's bedtime story about a magical potion that gives a warm hug, read by the BBC Radio Drama Company.
A podcast featuring bedtime stories written by children and read by the BBC Radio Drama Company.
Dick and Dom host a bedtime stories podcast featuring stories written by children for the BBC Radio 2 500 Words competition.