The Story Seeds Podcast kicks off Season One with a collaboration between our 11 year old creative rockstar Hannah and  Dan Gutman, best-selling author of the My Weird School series! 

On this episode, Dan Gutman helps Hannah grow her story seed:

A girl and boy find a magic seed that grows into a plant that sparks whatever they want on command. They wish for small things. They're not greedy. One day, an evil person steals the plant and uses it for bad things. The girl and the boy learn that there's a twin seed that stops the evil from spreading. They have to travel all over to find the seed.

Follow Dan and Hannah's Story Seeds adventure with our host Betsy Bird as they: 

• Meet up in person and take a field trip to Dear Mama Coffee on the Columbia University science campus (Jerome L. Greene Science Center) in New York City
• Drink yummy hot chocolate
• Brain dump their writing ideas (should the story be set in Alaska?) on index cards
• Meet a money tree named Jude.

The episode concludes with a storytime segment (14:26) where our featured author reads  the story they grew together: The Magic Seed!

Books mentioned in this episode: My Weird School series, The Kid Who Ran For President, My Weird Writing Tips, and Million Dollar Shot by Dan Gutman. 

Calls to Action

Bonus Episode: Check back next week to hear Betsy's interview with Dan Gutman. You’ll hear more about how he decided to become an author and get a few Dan-approved writing tips. Who knows? You could become really famous if you use them :) 

Get our Imagination Lab: Experiments in Creativity activity book! It pairs perfectly with the podcast and features tons of episode-inspired prompts and projects! Order your copy here!

Kids: How would you continue "The Magic Seed?"  Call The Story Seeds Hotline with your ideas at 646-389-5153 and let us know. You can also leave us a message with your own story seed (idea)  for a chance to be featured on a future episode. 

Grownups: Join our mailing list at www.storyseedspodcast.com for news and updates. You can also follow us on Instagram @storyseedspod, on Twitter @litsafarimedia and on Facebook @literarysafari. 

This episode is also available on YouTube. Subscribe here.

Show credits

Produced and written by Sandhya Nankani and Anjali Sakhrani. Kayla Fedeson is our Associate Producer. Scoring, mixing, and sound design is by Ania Grzesik and Matt Boynton of Ultraviolet Audio. Our field audio was recorded by James Boo. And thank you to our very special child handler, Amrita!

Love our theme song? We do too! It's by Andrew VanWyngarden, Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter/musician and co-founder of MGMT.

The Story Seeds Podcast is a creation and production of Literary Safari www.literarysafari.com.