"Ready to Swim" from The Willowbee Tree collection
Sparkle Stories Podcast
Lisabeth Sewell
4.4 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 20 August 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week's featured story comes from The Willowbee Tree collection.
It's called "Ready to Swim."
It is back to school time for Piper and Clancy, the two older Willowbee children. Clancy is sad about leaving kindergarten and worried about what first grade will bring. The willow tree seems to understand this and takes the Willowbees to an island in the American south where an alligator, a white ibis and several ghost crabs show them something miraculous: the moment when a little loggerhead turtle makes the difficult and courageous journey to the sea.
If you enjoyed that story, there are hundreds and hundreds more where that came from. Try a Sparkle subscription now - for free. Go to www.sparklestories.com and click the button at the top that says “Start Free Trial,” then you can listen to our giant library as much as you like, anytime you like.
Each week on the Sparkle Stories Podcast, we share a free story from one of our original story series!
For many many many more stories like this one, visit the Sparkle website:
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Email us! info@sparklestories.com
Enjoy!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, friends. Welcome to the Sparkle Stories podcast. This is Elizabeth of Sparkle Stories. Here we are in August. And at Sparkle Stories, we are all about back to school. For those of you that are in traditional school systems or that |
| 0:20.9 | organize your schooling around fall, winter, and spring, we are pulling out all of our best stories |
| 0:28.9 | and projects and thinking so we can support you in this big and beautiful transition. So I've |
| 0:34.7 | picked a very dear story called Ready to Swim. It's from the Willoughby Tree |
| 0:40.3 | series. Do you know that series? The sister and brothers Piper and Clancy and Little Tye. This one |
| 0:48.6 | features Clancy because Clancy is going from kindergarten to first grade. And he's nervous about it. And so the willow tree |
| 0:57.0 | takes them to the American South, where they get to meet an alligator, an ibis, some ghost crabs, |
| 1:04.2 | and especially a little loggerhead turtle. So listen in and find out what they get to experience. Now, if you are not yet |
| 1:15.1 | a Sparkle subscriber, I encourage you to consider joining us. It is super easy. It's free for everyone, |
| 1:22.0 | and we love having you as a part of our community. You can enjoy our entire collection of over 1,500 original stories. |
| 1:31.2 | All you have to do is go to the Sparkle website, SparklStories.com, and click the button in the top right |
| 1:38.8 | that says start free trial. That's SparklStories.com and click the button in the top right that says start free trial. Okay, now here is the story ready to swim. |
| 2:14.7 | In the backyard of an ordinary house on an ordinary street in an ordinary town, there was once a most extraordinary tree. |
| 2:26.3 | It was an enormous willow tree, and in the middle of its trunk there was a hole. |
| 2:33.3 | Now, if you found yourself near that will trunk there was a hole. |
| 2:41.1 | Now, if you found yourself near that willow tree with a certain wonder stirring in your heart, |
| 2:46.4 | you might notice a colorful sparkle coming from that hole. |
| 2:48.4 | And what was that sparkle? |
| 2:55.5 | An invitation to go somewhere long ago and far, far away. |
| 3:03.7 | The family that lived in the ordinary house on the ordinary street in the ordinary town was named Willoughby. |
| 3:06.5 | And the Willoughby children, Piper, Clancy, and Little Tye loved the extraordinary |
| 3:13.2 | magic that sparkled from the willow tree. It was the end of summer, and the Willoughby children |
... |
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