Welcome to Goop Tales. I'm Maria Kalinchini, the founder, writer, and narrator behind these original audio stories.

Goop Tales is a storytelling podcast for children, created to ignite your imagination, broaden your horizons,

and introduce you to different cultures and exotic animals,

while also sparking important conversations about character traits.

Now, before we get into today's story, I have to say that today is very, very,

very special because the first GoopTales book, the first printed book is up and ready to go

and for sale. If you go to goptails.com forward slash book, you will be able to get one.

And the first 100 that I published are going to be personally signed by me sent from my house.

And then after that, I'm moving on to Amazon because it's much easier for me that way.

And the first 100, unfortunately, I can only send them out in the U.S.

So if you're U.S.-based, please go get one and I will sign it for you.

And for anybody that's international, the Amazon link will be up very shortly as well.

And this is just the beginning because I have plans, the first five books, I have plans to put them up,

including this one, on Amazon, because they're fully illustrated. So the illustrations

have already been done for these books. So you're going to be able to get the first five books

very shortly as soon as I get everything up there. But the first book is available now.

This is the best way you can support me. There is no

better way to support GoopTales than buying a book. And you're supporting yourself when you do that.

And let me tell you why. When you read, and I know a lot of you are new readers and some of you are

very advanced readers, but I was just lot of you are new readers and some of you are very advanced readers,

but I was just reading a study on reading, or it's called Stolen Focus, and it was a study

about how our focus is stolen because of screens. And all of you that are listening are growing up

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