Fairy Tales with New Modern Twists, Bearily Bear Podcast

Links from this Episode:

• Bearily Bear Stories Website 
• Bearily Bear Stories on Apple Podcasts 
• Bearily Bear Stories on Spotify 
• Miral Reads Instagram 
• Miral Reads Tik Tok  
• Princess and the Pea Episode 
• Sleeping Beauty Episode
• Guide to Kid Podcasts 

Miral Sattar, the host, describes the show like this, a modern retelling of outdated fairy tales.

I’m Miral Sattar and a mother of three. I rewrite outdated fairy tales with problem solving, smart princesses who save themselves. Bearily Bear Stories, features diverse and confident characters. There are no damsels in distress here. The length of each episode is about 15 minutes. 

Guide to Kid Podcasts

One of my favorite parenting tools is kid podcasts. I use them when I’m running errands with the kiddos to keep them from complaining the whole time. When I need a mom break, I’ll just grab an easy activity like coloring pages or a sensory bin, turn on a kid podcast and the kids will be entertained for at least half an hour.

I know that kid podcasts would help you in your life too, which is why I made a Guide to Kid podcasts. There are eight categories ranging from science to mindfulness to audio drama with at least three podcasts in each category. There are 27 podcasts in total on the guide. I’ve listened to each of the podcasts so I can attest to them being kid friendly, and I put my email at the bottom of the guide so that if you try a couple with your kids, and none of them are a good fit.

You can email me and I will personally help you find a kid podcast that works for your littles and you, you can grab this guide at the link in the show note. 

Reimagined Fairy Tales

My name is Miral Sattar. I launched Bearily Bear Stories Reimagined Fairy Tales about a year ago. The stories feature princesses from different backgrounds with different needs. They’re inclusive and the princesses actually save themselves, which is my favorite messaging in the podcast I felt like there were too many princess stories where she always needs to be saved by her prince.

What my husband and I would do is when my daughter was three or four years old, we would read stories to her and we would change the plot line. She was obsessed with Thumbelina who goes from a human who is born through a flower and then she gets passed from one caregiver to another and she never really has any control over her life.

We would find ourselves rewriting the story and I did that for a lot of the stories. I decided to rewrite a lot of them and have them feature different stories. 

Showcasing Countries and Cultures

Our 12 dancing princesses are from India. There’s a lot of food elements too. We have Snow White from Sudan, then we have the Little Mermaid in Bulgaria. There are tons of stories. They’re fun and educational, but they also teach you a little bit about the culture of each country that the story is told from, which I love, and which I think the kids love too.

Using Fairy Tales to Empower Young Girls 

This podcast is about problem solving princesses from different countries around the world and it’s a spin on the traditional stories that is more empowering for little kids and little girls.

When I was growing up a lot of the messaging was to find a husband, get married, settle down, have children, and that was the only path in life, but it’s not the only path. I feel that little girls and little boys should be given and presented everything and given the option to choose. One of my favorite stories is, princess and the pea. She’s a lost princess and she comes up to the prince’s house and she sleeps there on her 30 mattresses. When she wakes up she couldn’t sleep so she explores the palace library. 

That’s where she meets the prince and they end up liking the same book and then they decide to become really good friends. 

I feel like there’s unrealistic expectations around you meet somebody and then you’re meant to be with them and you in five minutes. When in reality, that’s never usually the case.

Screen Free Entertainment

The podcast is also to entertain. My middle child gets a lot of motion sickness in the car. So we listened to a lot of podcasts and when I first started there weren’t too many targeted towards little kids. Now we’re so grateful that there are and there’s so many that they can choose from.

We’re a low tech family, so I like screened free activities. All of my kids went to Montessori and the philosophy there is that when you expose screens to them at an early age, then they have a hard time distinguishing from 2D to 3D. That’s why I think listening is very important because it builds skills that will help you later on in life. 

Just even the action of listening. Not everybody can do it and it’s important to have kids listening to things, so they’re not always constantly watching. We do have screen time, but when I ask the audio producer to add music to my stories  I remind them that we’re competing against Netflix and we’re competing against Daniel Tiger so it has to be as exciting. We need kids to want to listen to the podcast as much as they want to watch tv. That was in my mind as one of my goals. 

I would describe the Bearily Bear as playful and fun. It is geared towards a younger audience, mostly like preschoolers and early elementary school kids. That’s the vibe that we’re going for. They also  get to listen to music and there are sound effects so it is fun and exciting, 

Connect with Bearily Bear

The podcast is available on every single podcast network. If you just search Bearily Bear Stories, it’s on Amazon, Spotify, Sirius XM, Pandora and Amazon Music.  I’m trying to get it onto other platforms as well. If you just search Bearily Bear Stories, you can find the podcast. I also have updates of new episodes on my social media, which Miral Reads on Instagram and Miral Reads on TikTok. You can definitely find it. I also have a website too. 

A Twist on Princess and the Pea 

My personal favorite episode is, princess and the pea. She is a princess whose favorite thing about meeting the prince was exploring the palace library. She got to do this really fun activity. 

Sleeping Beauty Retold 

My most popular podcast, which I also love, is a tale of Sleeping Beauty. It’s based on sleeping beauty, but there’s a twist.

It’s a remake of Sleeping Beauty, but instead of being a princess who needs saving and who has a spell on her, the curse that she was dealt with was she can’t stop cleaning.  Later on she realizes that it’s okay to not obsessively clean all the time. It’s a little bit about children who have OCD. That is our most trafficked podcast right now and I did not expect that. 

Bearily Bear Apparel

We’re launching our Bearily Bear t-shirts for kids and babies in the summer. They’ll be available in the store soon, so we’re pretty excited about that.