In response to widespread stay-at-home orders and near-total public school closures caused by the new coronavirus, Julie Andrews and her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, are pushing up their timetable for their new children’s podcast, and will release six episodes of the program, Julie’s Library ahead of schedule. The first episode in the series will be made available on April 29 and the subsequent five episodes will be released each week thereafter.
The podcast, which is aimed at audiences age 4–10, will feature guest appearances by Mac Barnett, Kai Cheng Thom, Meg Medina, Christine Baldacchino, and Michelle Knudsen. Book readings will be mixed with conversation with guests and vocabulary words selected by children. “Each story will take us on a grand adventure,” Andrews said in the trailer for the podcast, which was released on March 15.
“It is our hope that the stories and ideas we share on Julie’s Library will provide family listening pleasure, inspire meaningful conversations, and be a trusted resource for literary enjoyment and learning,” she said in a statement issued by producer American Public Media.
To date, the Academy Award-winning actor has authored more than 30 books for young readers, some co-written with her daughter. “Our shared passion for the power of storytelling, literacy, and the arts remains fervent,” Andrews said.
Andrews and Hamilton recorded the first six episodes prior to the coronavirus outbreak, and production was done remotely in subsequent weeks to edit each week’s programming. In an e-mail to PW, producers Tracy Mumford and Elyssa Dudley said 14 subsequent episodes will follow the release of the first six. “We are playing it by ear given the current circumstances,” they wrote, “but we hope to have more stories out for listeners soon after these first six episodes are published.”
