Stories Kids Seem to Like

We asked our listeners which stories they like to listen to as a family. Here’s what they had to say.

This was parents’ No. 1 pick as a kid’s favorite.

Stories of babysitters, and what goes on while mom and dad are away that mom and dad never find out about.

At the suggestion of a 14-year-old listener, we created this episode of stories from the awkward, confusing, hormonally-charged world of middle school.

The story of a father and the incredible, decades-long fantasy he created for his 12 children.

Rosie’s dad told her to stop bothering him with all her questions. She should write them all down, he said. Nine-year-old Rosie did just that.

Lots of great stories of kids using perfectly logical arguments and arriving at perfectly wrong conclusions. Note there’s a spoiler about the tooth fairy in the prologue — if you want to avoid that with your kid, skip to Act One.

Rachel has two kids. Elias, age seven, is a vegetarian. Theo, age five, is not. But Elias wants Theo, and everyone else in the house, to be vegetarian too.

When Elna Baker was a kid, she hit her younger sister on the head with a broom, then lied and said it was an accident. So Elna’s dad held a family trial to find the truth.

Stories of summer camp.

A teenager runs away from home to move in with someone he’s never met, his idol, the person he respects most of all, a writer named Piers Anthony.

We asked listeners to send us their best coincidence stories, and we got more than 1,300 submissions! There were so many good ones we decided to make a whole show about them.

Ryan Knighton tells this story about trying to get his daughter to understand his blindness.

Eleven-year-old Sara thought she saw a little girl who was only 4 inches tall – just like the characters she read about in The Borrowers books. Then her dad decided to keep the fantasy going.

Molly FitzSimons’ dad started a cable channel with no people, no talking, no stories, no sports, but lots and lots of puppies.

Starlee Kine tells a story about getting as close to Disneyland as you possibly can, without actually going in, over and over.

Elna Baker worked at the giant toy store, FAO Schwartz. Her job was to sell these lifelike “newborn” dolls. She noticed certain dolls sold a lot better than others, for disturbing reasons.

What would it really be like to have superpowers?

You know those mashup foods like the KFC Double Down? Where fried chicken is the bread of the sandwich with bacon and cheese in between? Or the pizza with little hot dogs as the crust that Pizza Hut created? Zoe Chace goes to the room where they invent these weird Frankenfoods.

Miki Meek takes Ira back to her old high school in Payson, Utah, to meet up with students who go above and beyond when they ask out dates to school dances … using chickens, goats, and buried treasure.

A kid’s dad dies, and he grows up to be a scientist, hoping to invent a time machine to stop his father’s death.

A tornado hits a small town in Kansas on prom night, and kids try to make sense of their remade world. Note that this one is reflective and kind of sad.