Penelope Puddleworth's Perfect Problem 👑✨

Penelope Puddleworth wakes up one morning with a brand new certainty. She is perfect. Not quite perfect. Not mostly perfect. Properly, completely, magnificently perfect. Possibly the most perfect person who has ever lived, and certainly the most perfect person in her school, on her street, or in the entire town if she is being honest about it.

At first, this feels marvellous. School becomes easier when you are convinced you already know everything. Problems vanish when you believe you are too perfect to have them. People seem smaller. Penelope seems taller. Better. Finer. Superior in every measurable way. It is oddly satisfying in the playground to look down at everyone and think, yes, I am clearly winning at being a person today.

Then the day unfolds, and perfection starts behaving in a very strange way.

Because perfection is not just a feeling you carry around in your head. It is a thing. A physical thing. And the more Penelope insists on being superior to everyone around her, the more awkward it becomes to actually exist in the world. Friendships start wobbling. Conversations go sideways. The playground turns into a place where being the best is suddenly not the same as belonging, and belonging starts to feel more important than Penelope expected.

Doors become difficult to fit through when you are convinced you are larger than life. Chairs feel wrong when you believe you are too good to sit in them like a normal person. Other children stop inviting you to join their games when you keep announcing that you could do it better if you bothered, which you will not, because you are far too perfect to bother with their silly activities.

By lunchtime, Penelope is eating alone. By afternoon break, she is standing by herself near the fence, looking at groups of children laughing together and wondering when everyone else became so small and she became so isolated. By home time, perfection does not feel marvellous anymore. It feels lonely. Heavy. Like carrying around a balloon that has grown so large it is lifting you off the ground and away from everyone you actually care about.

This episode is funny, thoughtful, and gently bonkers in equal measure. It is for clever kids who enjoy a story that makes them giggle and think at the same time, and for parents who want a bedtime story podcast that has warmth and kindness at its heart without feeling like a lecture disguised as entertainment. The humour is silly on the surface, with recognisable truths tucked underneath about confidence, friendship, and what actually matters when you are trying to figure out who you are.

Perfect for family listening after school when everyone needs to wind down, during car journeys when the mood needs lifting, or at bedtime when you want a kids storytelling podcast episode that builds with fun then lands softly enough that sleep can actually happen. If you are searching for funny bedtime stories for kids that are not mean, not preachy, and still genuinely entertaining for grown ups who are tired of nursery rhyme nonsense, Penelope's perfectly peculiar day is a lovely place to start.

The story builds with silly moments and recognisable playground dynamics, then settles into something warm and gentle that makes it a brilliant calming bedtime story choice for audio stories for children that help everyone feel a bit softer by the end.

Mr Morton's Barmy Book of Bonkers Bits is wholesome family storytelling with a bonkers twist. Performance driven, kind hearted, and never mean.

Episode length: approximately 13 minutes
Ages: 4 to 400
Best enjoyed: bedtime, car journeys, after school wind down

Follow the show for more family listening stories that feel like a cuddle with a silly hat on.