telling stories to children is worth every second
We just got our sons a Yoto Player, which is a pretty nifty device. Marketed as a screenless audio player without ads, cameras, or microphones (the implication being that it’s not spying on you like every other connected device in your home), it seems, at first glance, to be designed for audiobooks. And it does offer many audiobooks targeting kids ages 3-12. A decent chunk of these are included in the Yoto Club, which is a subscription service.
We like it a lot so far.
Our elder son has been enjoying it a lot as well. We got him Babar and a Fairy Tale collection that hosts about two hours worth of audio. But what we’ve discovered in the few days since acquiring this little doodad is that there are a vast array of radio stations and podcasts made for children that are freely accessed through the app and player.
This is a nice bonus feature, I must say.
Our son already loves dancing to the radio stations, some of which are in French or Spanish, and you can get RTE and BBC.
But the best aspect of this device is that it allows you to create your own audio playlists that you can upload onto the cards that the Yoto plays. And there is a lot of freedom here.
You can download the audiobooks you already own on audible and upload them onto these cards. Someone has reported that they were able to fit the entire 20 hour Fellowship of the Ring performed by Andy Serkis onto a single card, which is quite a lot!
Along with audiobooks, you can upload any kind of audio you want. Music, your own thoughts, messages from grandparents—whatever you want! There seem to be no restrictions as long as you’re willing to record and upload it.
And this process is staggeringly easy. If you have the audio tracks, you simply upload them onto your account. Then, from the app, you connect the playlist to the specific card you want it on.
While the Yoto Player doesn’t have a screen, it does allow you to display an 8bit image on the front of the player. The Yoto cards produced by Yoto come with their own as pictured below.
I mention this because it’s a nice little feature for your child while they’re listening to something you made for them.
A few months ago, my wife wanted to retell the Mandalorian to our son. Like all little kids alive right now, he’s very aware of Baby Yoda. Sadly, he can’t watch the Mandalorian because we won’t let him. But he loves Baby Yoda because how could you not? And so my wife decided to bring the story to him.
Slowly, she’s been rewriting the episodes and telling them to him at night. This project has come in fits and spurts, but on Monday night, she recorded the episodes, edited them, and uploaded them to the Yoto card. Tuesday morning, my son woke up and, to his utter surprise, got to listen to his mother tell him the story of the Mandalorian over his audio player while an 8bit Baby Yoda stared back at him.
If you don’t see how wonderful this is, you probably don’t have children. But if you do have kids, I cannot recommend this enough.
I bring all this up because I’m changing my fiction publishing schedule for the year.
The New Schedule
Despite laying out a clear schedule at the beginning of the year, I ended up changing my mind to publish 12 books this year.
Well, it was a fun idea but I suppose it’s better to actually plan for such an ambitious project rather than do it just to do it. So I’m changing my mind once more. Also, certain things have changed with regard to the timing of some of my books.
So here’s how the schedule looks right now:
January - At Home Inside You1
March - Colony Collapse (Episode One of The Shattered Stars)
June - The Blood Dancers (Episode Two of The Shattered Stars)
July - Iron Wolf (The sequel to Howl [paperback currently only$9.99!)
September - Sleeping Giants (Episode Three of The Shattered Stars)
October - The Adventures of Horus and Motherfucker
November - Broken Katana (The sequel to Iron Wolf)
December - Libertatia, or The Onion King (Episode Four of The Shattered Stars)
So eight books instead of the six promised and four fewer than the twelve I wanted to get to. Of course, I reserve the right to toss another book or two in there. For those keeping track, Iron Wolf had to be moved from its planned release at the end of the month for publishing reasons, but rest assured that it is written, edited, and ready to go!
I’ll have more to say about it and the rest of these as time goes on. I also need to tell you all about what I have planned for next year, which will likely see me hitting twelve books, since I’m rereleasing my currently out of print novels for their ten-year anniversary.
If you’re asking yourself what this has to do with the Yoto Player, here’s where I tell you that I’m going to be writing and recording stories for my son instead of all of you.
I know, you’re heartbroken, but I’m sure you’ll soldier on without my beautiful fictions.
On the other hand, this slowing down of releasing books will allow me the time to finally begin the serialized novel I’ve been promising. More on that in the weeks ahead, but it may begin as early as the first week of May.
But this week I’m going to be rewriting the story of Achilles for my son because he asked me what this song was about:
And I remembered how much I loved myths when I was a child (and adult), so I thought I’d retell the story for him, record it, and allow him to have it at his convenience. It’s possible he’ll have listened to it before you even read this post2!
Along with that, I’ve been reading a bunch of King Arthur books because he’s been interested in King Arthur lately, so I’ll be rewriting, bit by bit, the many King Arthur legends. And then he’s been really into pirates and cowboys and monsters and I have a real good idea for how to pull these all together and create a serialized work for him to potentially enjoy for the rest of his childhood and maybe beyond.
It’s possible that you, dear reader, will someday be able to experience these as well.
We shall see.
What else?
This is a junkdrawer post, as it turns out.
This week, substack released Notes, which is their attempt to unseat Twitter. I have a few thoughts about it, but I find it an interesting endeavor. I’m having a bit of fun with it, so if you want to follow along, you can go over to Substack Notes.
Will this become anything? Only time will tell. Right now it has enough high profile users with enough incentives for it to have a real chance, but unless casual non-newsletter-writing users begin to use it, it’ll probably quietly disappear by the end of summer.
Anyway—
you can still get the Howl ebook for free.
Along with that, you can nominate Glossolalia for the Ursula K Le Guin Award. I don’t expect to win because that would be possibly too much good fortune for this frail body to handle, but if you loved Glossolalia, I would very much appreciate you nominating my novel.
I don’t talk about heroes here because I don’t have any, but Le Guin is probably the closest to a hero I’ve had for the last fifteen years. It would be quite meaningful to me to be considered for the award.
Also, if you’re wondering how to support authors (and other artists), this post is pretty good!
And then a bunch of other sales and giveaways:
I know, I know, I said these would be coming out quickly but I ran into some issues with the second episode which derailed me. I will get back to this! I may just make it a single full length book instead of releasing them in the episodic fashion I originally intended.
Well, writing has a way of expanding and getting away from me so this is becoming a larger project than anticipated and will likely end up encompassing the lives of Achilles and Odysseus.
Reading aloud and telling stories was a big deal in mg family. I’m pretty sure I am who I am today because my dad read me all of The Hobbit when I was about six. He read to us until my brother and I were well into our teens, at which point I was still reading to my little sister.
All this to say: That Yoto thing looks pretty darn cool!! And rewriting the myths for your kids sounds like such a fun project.
II teach in a School of Information which was once a School of Librarianship. A few of us still teach about books. I'm not a youth book person but many of my friends are.
You might like to look at the website of the Association for Library Services to Children.
https://www.ala.org/alsc/