Heartwood · The Faith Shelf
No sermon at the end. The faith is already in the plot.
You grew up on full-cast audio drama that kept you glued to the car speakers. This is that same power built for your 8-to-12-year-old, where faith drives the story and the narrative carries the weight. Episode one of Joseph is ready for your ears right now. Play it with your child if you can.
Joseph, Episode 1: The Coat and the Pit. Genesis 37, full cast, ages 8 to 12, 17:03. The brothers' resentment in their own words. The dream told twice. The coat. The pit. Listen for where the meaning lives. The story carries the whole weight.
The story that stops to explain itself
Most faith audio for kids has the same shape. A story, then the pause, then the lesson pinned to the end like a receipt. The story exists to deliver a point, and your child learns to hear the point coming from three sentences away.
Somewhere in that shape, the story stops being a story. And the faith starts sounding like a subject.
Here, the rule is different. Remove the closing explanation and the meaning survives. The brothers' jealousy is in the field with them. Joseph's dream is told the way a dream gets told, twice, because the second telling is how his father hears it. The pit is a pit. We build every scene so your child retells the plot, because the plot is where the faith actually lives.
These stories are built for the child who wants to know what happens next. Built so the drama commands the car ride, and the faith takes root through the characters' choices.
Episode one is playing above. Hear the rule in practice before you read another word about it.
Original worlds, not object lessons
Stories where faith moves the plot
The faith shelf carries its own ongoing originals, written for the age on the label.
The Old Candle is an original series, mapped for six parts, told with a storyteller and four character voices. Part 1, The Ford, runs 11:18 and is built for ages 6 to 8. It opens like an adventure, because it is one.
For the youngest listeners, Christian and the Heavy Bag retells John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress at the 3 to 6 level, 7:30, with a storyteller and four voices. The burden is heavy. The road is long. The drama puts listeners right on the road beside him.
Stories with real stakes. Built to be retold at the dinner table.
The Bible as a series, not a storybook
The whole Bible, told like the epic it is
The children's Bibles most of us grew up with hand down pages. One scene per page. A picture, a paragraph, a moral. The Bible as a stack of cards.
The real thing is a series. Seasons, episodes, characters who return, an arc that runs from beginning to end and points to Jesus the whole way. That is the story we are building: the whole Bible as one connected drama, told at full strength.
Season one opens with Joseph: six voiced episodes, full cast, beginning in Genesis 37. The coat, the dreams, the pit, Egypt, the brothers, the reunion. That is what is live today: Joseph as a complete six-part dramatic season, pointing straight toward the larger redemption story.
The gospel is carried in the drama itself, in the words and choices of the characters. The way the text always has.
The other shelf, labeled too
The classics your child climbs inside
The faith shelf is one of two, and both carry the same membership. The classics shelf holds Treasure Island and the other great books, retold at levels and, at the top, in full. It is open to any family, labeled for exactly what it is. A child who loves Joseph at nine steps right into Jim Hawkins at ten.
Treasure Island chapter 1 is written at four levels, so the story is the constant and your child moves up inside it. Voiced and playable today: the 8 to 10 rung (10:27), where your child meets the old sea-dog at their exact listening level.
- Ages 6 to 8 · written
- Ages 8 to 10 · voiced, hear the sample
- Ages 11 to 14 · written
- Unabridged · voiced, full text
Both shelves. One price.
The full-cast faith club you already know runs $107.88 a year. Heartwood, when the library opens, is $99 a year for everything: the Bible drama, the original worlds, the classics ladder, and every new episode and new world as they arrive. Nothing bought one card, one figurine or one credit at a time.
- One price opens the whole library, both shelves
- New episodes and new worlds keep arriving
- Plays on the phones, tablets and speakers a family owns. No player to buy, no cards
- An age band on every title, so you screen it before your child hears it
When the library opens
$79 for your first year, then $99 a year
Founding families pay $79 for the first year, then $99 a year, available to new members by December 31. The renewal price is stated up front, on the same screen as the signup, and you can cancel any time.
$99 a year ($8.25 a month)
Every shelf, every rung, every episode, under one price
$9.99 a month
The same library, month to month
14-day trial when the library opens. The price, the renewal date and the cancel path are shown before you sign up.
For the younger ones in the back seat
The faith shelf serves a mixed-age house across ages 3 to 12. Joseph carries the 8 to 12s. The Old Candle, The Ford, part 1, runs 11:18 for the 6 to 8s. Christian and the Heavy Bag, 7:30, for the 3 to 6s. All Here, a Luke 15 drama, 6:26, for the 3 to 5s. Each title carries its age band and exact runtime on the label.
Faith shelf · Original series
The Old Candle, Part 1: The Ford
Faith shelf · Classic retelling
Christian and the Heavy Bag
Faith shelf · Bible drama · Luke 15
All Here
Questions a careful parent asks
We already pay for a faith audio club and love it. Is this a replacement?
Keep it. Heartwood is built for what your 8-to-12 child steps into next: new heroic worlds, a season-by-season Bible drama, and the classics ladder at every rung. Both belong in the same home.
Will this be devotional drama that stops to explain itself, or so light the faith gets lost?
The Joseph sample is your answer. It carries jealousy, grief and mercy, played by a full cast, with the gospel driving the plot. Press play and hear how the story carries the truth.
Is it too intense for my younger ones?
Every title carries its age band, and the band is on the sample itself. Play the scene yourself, first, the way you preview anything that goes in their ears. The shelf is built to hold the 8 to 12s and the 3 to 6s on different rungs, and the little ones stay on theirs.
Will the theology hold? What is the stance?
Broad, non-denominational Christian. The whole story points to Jesus, and we say that plainly. The Joseph episodes dramatize the biblical text at full narrative weight. Play episode one and judge the theological depth by ear.
The gospel is free, and faith apps have burned me before. Why pay?
The price sits beside what it buys: several ongoing worlds, a full-cast Bible drama, and the classics ladder, produced to a standard, under one membership. Before you pay anything, you get a 14-day trial when the library opens. The price, the renewal date and the cancel path are shown right on the first screen before you sign up.
There is free faith audio out there. What does this add?
A single free series does not hold several ongoing worlds, a season-by-season Bible drama and the classics at every level, in one consistent production, under one price. Free audio is scattered by nature. This is a shelf, labeled and kept.
How are the voices produced?
We use human and AI collaboration to produce truly compelling stories encompassing the human emotion and impact.
Hand it down at full strength
If you grew up on full-cast faith drama, you already know the sound. The voices. The music. A scene that plays in the car and comes back up at bedtime. You know it stuck, and you know why.
You want the faith you hand down to become your child's own. We built this shelf for that child, at that age, so the narrative takes root in the imagination and stays there.
When the library opens, founding families pay $79 for the first year, then $99 a year, for new members by December 31. The renewal price is stated up front on the signup screen, with a 14-day trial and the full terms and cancel path shown before you sign up.
Until the doors open, the samples are ready. Play them with your child and judge the whole shelf by ear.
Play Episode One: The Coat and the Pit
heartwoodstory.com