The programme is set in a library that comes to life at night, where the puppets Jelly and Jackson and a member of the Wordsworth family create stories using a "Story Machine". At the stroke of midnight, Jackson and Jelly (pink and green
puppets who live in the library and hide in the daytime) come out and are joined by a presenter, one of the members of the Wordsworth family, who recites "The sun is down, the stars are bright, Story Makers come out at night" as they appear. The Wordsworths together with Jelly and Jackson are the Story Makers. Objects found in the library or appearing by magic are put into the top of the story machine (transformed from a
desktop computer); Jelly, Jackson and the story maker then recite "Imagine, imagine, imagine a story!" and the story machine makes a book containing a story based on the object. The story in the book is then "read out" (although this is replaced on screen by
live action or an
animation). The stories that appear are a Playbook (live action segments with young children) and the remaining stories are animated (
traditional animation,
stop-motion animation or puppets). The characters in the stories are fairly consistent, including Sniff and Wag (two puppet dogs), Blue Cow (a cartoon cow, created by
Blue Zoo Animation) and Kevin the Spaceman and his dog, Spanner (puppets). There is always a Blue Cow story and a Playbook – the other story varies between each episode. As dawn begins and the sun rises, the Story Maker takes his or her leave and recites "Dawn is upon us, the morning is nigh, we've made our stories and we bid you goodbye!" and disappears. Jelly and Jackson hide and the story machine turns back into a computer, but the books produced overnight remain for the librarian and children to find when the library opens at 9am. From Series 2 to 4, Jelly and Jackson sometimes look at what the kids or the librarian are doing during the credits and hide to make it look like they are invisible to the humans, but this never happened in Series 1.
Stories Each episode features a Playbook segment with real children and a Blue Cow story, alongside a rotating selection of other animated or puppet story strands such as Kevin the Spaceman and Barnacle Rock. The other story rotates from the list below: •
Kevin the Spaceman (appears in every series): Stories about Spaceman Kevin and his dog Spanner visiting various planets. •
Sniff and Wag (appears in every series): Stories about dogs Sniff and Wag who visit a park at night. •
Barnacle Rock (appears in Series 1–3): Stories about sea creatures finding something on the ocean floor. •
Jack Sprat and Treacle Cat (only appears in Series 1): Stories about Jack Sprat, a rat, and his friend Treacle Cat who live in a garbage bin. •
Tales from Faraway (only appears in Series 1): Stories, original and traditional, that use shadow puppets. •
The Poons (only appears in Series 1): Stories about various kitchen tools and appliances. •
Super Baby (only appears in Series 4): Stories about a baby superhero. •
The Three Bears (appears in Series 3–4): A subversion of
Goldilocks and the Three Bears where the Bears are visited by someone other than Goldilocks, though she does appear in one episode. Every story ends with Mother Bear putting something new on her porridge. •
Rainforest Tales (only appears in Series 2): Stories about the adventures of animals in a rainforest. ==Characters==