I was wondering if you’d like to share any thoughts on this classic fairytale, that I’m adapting for Storytelling audiences?

Did you know it was written by the Classic French Author Charles Perrault, and has roots in folk law and music  of Nordic Countries and Scandinavian languages..

bye for now

Natasha*

Performed live for Young children, Parents & Families

Storytelling — Libraries & Schools

for more info:

natasha@storynory.com

www.storynory.com

Dear Listeners You can now find me on the National Storytelling Conference Network directory listings under Natasha for more info. The NSC conference in California was a wonderful opportunity to learn more about Organisational Storytelling for schools and community projects and build on my skills as a Storyteller. It was super to make friends with some of the best Storyteller’s out there; Eric Woof, Mike Locket and Mary Jo Huff. I gained invaluable insight from Storyteller coach Nancy Dorval on taking Stories into Schools and libraries. The best experience by far though was in Mary J Shaefer’s Traditional Tales workshop where I got the chance to share my stand up telling for young listeners of Little Red Riding Hood!!! More details and developments-coming soon- Keep you posted!”

This is something I like to see … Bertie is crowding out the competition in the UK iTunes Kids and Family Podcast section. It’s the summer, and people are downloading our stories to take with their buckets and spades. Happy Travels!

We hope that you will find that our new set-up is more speedy.

Lots of interesting words can all be gathered up in a story and as the reader we have to grab hold of those, imagine them as a real life things – Make these images real!! Characters in life are in abundance- they are every where you go- use the person you last saw on the train or the bus- the more real the better!!!

Then there’s the narrative through line, the journey; its up and down paths that take you on an adventure as you read aloud. Try to grab hold of the reins and control the pace- Its your story!!

And finally, most of all make it you own

bye for now
Natasha

The aim is to improve site navigation, and to help you find your way around our various series of stories. You can also browse these category “boxes” in the archive sections. The links to the archives are now horizontally across the top of the site.

We hope that the icons are giving our characters a better visual representation, and the brief descriptions will help new visitors.

Our “offers” or ads are now top left, in the hope that we will improve our click through rate with casual visitors who arrive here by accident. Each click is another penny in the box.

Our story-teller, RICHARD SCOTT graduated from the University of Cambridge with Classics and Archaeology before training at the Central School of Speech and Drama for the MA in Classical Acting. Roles since graduating have included Macbeth (Macbeth, Creation Theatre Co.) and Lysander (Midsummer Nights Dream, Bitesize Theatre co.) When not acting, Richard works closely with London primary schools helping with their recruitment of teachers.

(Bertie adds some Storynory inside info – Richard and Natasha studied Classical Acting together at the Central School of Speech and Drama).

Download the audio (Click to Play, Right Click to Save As)

We announce the winners of the Storynory Easter 2010 Writing Competition.

Which two young story-writers will will win a Sweetpea3 MP3 player? We shall find out, but first we will listen to a range of stories from the 80 + entries.

Many thanks to Sweetpea3 for providing the prizes !

We will be publishing the text of every story entered into our competition in due course. (As soon as our site re-organisation is ready).

Stories are read by Elizabeth with comments from our producer, Hugh, who has been helping Bertie pick the prizes.

This is Elizabeth, and I’m here with the results of the Storynory Easter 2010 Story Writing Competition. I’m going to be reading some stories and extracts from several of the contestants, and at the end, we’ll see which two lucky winners will be receiving a Sweatpea3 MP3 player ! And we would like to say a big thank you to Sweetpea3, for sponsoring our competition. They make a really cute and well thought out MP3 player for kids and it’s perfect for playing our stories.

And now I’m joined by our producer, Hugh, who has been helping Bertie to pick the winners. Hugh what has response been like?

Well it’s been fantastic. We received over 80 entries written by listeners of all ages, from all over the world. And it’s been extremely hard to pick out the winners. I have to say that in a competition like this there is a huge element of luck, because there were so many stories that were so good, that the results comes down to Bertie’s personal taste and his whim. Unfortunately, only two stories can win the Sweetpea3 MP3 players, but we are going to read out as many as we can.

So Hugh, which story would you like to highlight first?

Let’s start with a few from some from the younger contestants. This is a very imaginative one by Ali Ziad Lone aged 6 , and it’s all about a box of crayons.

Once upon a time there was a land of blue crayons. The sky was blue, everything was blue. All crayons lived happily, having blue fun, except for one who was orange, very very orange. His hair was red. He name was Orangy-red Blue but sometimes he was called Blue Red-orangy.

Thank you Elizabeth. that’s a lot of fun. And of course the stories by younger writers are often very concise. Let’s hear an entire story in three lines by Alexis MacKie, aged 6

Snowmen were at work when an earthquake shook snowwomen awake.  Fires burned in Snowville.  Snowwomen were running and helping snowmen.  I like snowmen and snowwomen.  I also like sliding on snow.  I like snow.

And I must ask you to read another really, really short story by a contestant who is just a little bit older, and that ‘s Emma Matheson, aged 7, and it’s called, The Story of Water.

My story started in a shower, when a drop of water landed on the glass wall of the shower my eyes followed it. It ran to the tile floor”

I like you” I whisper to the drop of water.

“noooooooooooooooooooooooooo!” I said. The drop of water went into the drain. I started to cry. A drop of water landed on my hand.

“Oh” I said “I like you” I said.

Isn’t that just a perfect little story?

It’s lovely, but presumably not all the stories were so short?

No indeed we had some real epics, but the next one Bertie and I picked out is just a bit longer, and I think we should hear it in its entirety because it’s a really sweet tale. It’s called the Flower by Alainna Wigginton, aged 8

Once upon a time there was a young girl. Her name was Jessie. She lived in a big cottage with her mom and dad. She was an only child, but she wasn’t lonely because she had the biggest, most beautiful garden in the world. It was full of fruit trees that she loved to climb and in. One of the trees she had her own tree house. She loved to play in it, read in it, and watch birds. She was a very happy girl. It was there in the garden that she planted all the fruit and vegetables the garden could hold.

The garden was not just hers. It belonged to her whole family. They worked together to make it the biggest garden anyone had ever seen. Jessie enjoyed planting carrots, snap peas and cucumber. But her favorite thing to plant was the flowers. She loved all of the flowers in the garden, but there was only one flower in the garden she liked best. It was a beautiful blue flower with pink and yellow in the middle. Jessie knew that she would never want to let it die. She watered it every day and gave it flower food.

She had seen a lot of this kind of flower before, but there was something different about this one. It could talk! Jessie could not believe it when it said, “Hi there!” after it grew. She loved to talk with her new friend.

She did not tell her mom and dad that she had a flower friend. When they asked, “Where have you been, Jessie?” she would answer, “In the garden watering the plants.” And then she would go back outside.

One morning she asked, “May I go out to the garden and water the plants, Mom?”
“Yes, after you feed the dog,” Mom replied.

“O.K.” said Jessie. She put on her boots and went to the barn to feed Barker, their dog. He was just a little puppy. But Jessie loved him as much as the flower. She named him Barker because he liked to bark. Then Jessie came out of the barn and skipped to the garden.

“Flower!” she called.

 And the flower answered, “I’m here!” They loved to play cards, board games, and lots of other things.

On the last day of May, Jessie came out to the garden to see the flower all closed up in a ball. She kissed it goodnight and tip-toed  back inside.

I love that one because it’s so simple, and it seems to conjure up a little girl’s imaginative world so perfectly.

Yes it was lovely, But would you say that there were more boys or girls who sent stories in?

Oh definitely more girls. But there were some very exciting stories by boys too. This one has an unlikely hero in the form of a Funnel Web Spider, which is one of the most deadly spiders in the world, and to make it even more unusual, it’s set in the time of the dinosaurs. It’s a bit like Jurassic Park from a spider’s perspective, and it’s by Eden Smith aged 8. It’s pretty much all action. Let’s hear an extract from the middle of the story.

The raptor launched itself of the tree and grabbed Rhino and took him away.

“Rhino!” I shouted. “You’re goooooooooone!” I said to myself. I was very upset.

I jumped into the bushes and ran as fast as I could to catch up with the raptor. I was pushing through all of the weeds.

Suddenly, I bumped into a foot. I looked up and saw it was another tyrannosaurus rex. I really hoped it was nice and would help me, not chase me and eat me.

I said, “Hello”.

He said it back to me.

“Could you help me find my friend?” I said.

“Sure,” he said. “Hop on my back and tell me how he got lost.”

“Well,” I said. “There was a raptor in a tree that jumped out of the tree and grabbed my friend and ran away with him. I don’t know where the raptor took him.”

“Okay, where did the raptor first grab your friend?” he asked.

“Over at that tree,” I said.

“Anyway, what are your friend’s name and your name,” he said.

My name is Freak the Funnel Web and my friend’s name is Rhino the Red back.

When I told him my name and my friend’s name we went over to the tree that the raptor took Rhino the Red back away from me.

We followed the footprints of the raptor and we finally found the raptor.
I noticed that I couldn’t see Rhino.

I said to the tyrannosaurus rex, “Can you see Rhino the Red back?”

“No,” he said to me. “I can’t”.

We looked around and we couldn’t see him. A few seconds later the raptor tried to attack us but the tyrannosaurus rex tackled the raptor and it died. We walked past where the raptor was standing and we found Rhino laying on a rock.

“RHINO!” I yelled. “Are you okay?”

“Yep, I’m okay,” he said.

That’s a real boy’s story.

It certainly is. Anymore in that action packed vein?

Well the next one isn’t quite so fast paced, but we like dit, particularly for the ending which I must warn you is rather scary ! Particularly if you are a small fish. It’s by Tyler-jay McIntosh, aged 10

There was a little boy called Bill and he wanted a pet fish. So he begged and he begged and he begged until his mum could not take it anymore. The next day Bill and his mum went to the pet shop to buy a fish. While they were there Bill could not find a single fish that was right for him. So he asked the lady at the desk if there was anymore fish he could take a look at. “I have one more fish that I think you might like” the lady answered with a smile.

“Wow, cool that fish is amazing!” “I’ll take it,” said Bill with no objections at all, but the fish he lept up and danced around the whole store while humming a little tune “I am getting my very own fish my very own fish, my very own fish I am getting my very own fish and I can’t wait to take it!” By the look on Bill’s face you could tell that he was excited.

The sun was setting and the stars were forming as Bill and his mum set off through the night to get back home. Bill and his mum lived by the sea on top of a big hill so it took them 30-40mins. Bill was sitting at the edge of the window while he was also holding his fish in his hand the slightest bump, crack or slippery oil on the road would send his fish into the air and land in the sea. It was a really hot day so it must be a really hot night there for Bill’s mum winded down the windows in the car. At the side of the road there was speed limit saying “30mph” Bill’s mum didn’t worry about that because she was going 25mph. Bill’s mum did not see this coming there was a speed bump right in front of her and as soon as she realized, she pressed on the brake “hard” but it was not enough, soon the fish was flung into the air and landed into the sea with a big splash!

Meanwhile in the car, Bill and his mum were so sad about, you know who, a name that I can’t even repeat in the story anymore only Bill and his mum can. “I want my fish back!” cried Bill as loud as he could. “Don’t worry I’ll get you a new one and even better too.” “No I want my fish back!”

Meanwhile under the sea Bill’s fish wasn’t finding it easy as well. “Bill, Bill where are you?” Bill’s fish was scared as another fish said, “Hello young fish you look very plump and tasty” licking his lips at him “who are you and what do you want” Bill’s fish replied with a shaky voice. “I want some dinner and you look so tasty!”……………….

OOOOH… That’s scary..

And what would you say the competition tells us about Storynory listeners?

It’s hard to say if the competition entrants exactly represent our listeners, but I can say that up until about the age of eight, there seems to be a fairly even split between boys and girls .

The biggest group of entrants by far was made up of girls aged about nine or ten, and they come from all over the world, but particularly the English speaking countries and South East Asia. We have a lot of listeners in Vietnam, China and South Korea by the way. The contestants are very international in their outlook, they often write about travel, or living abroad. We had an interesting story about visiting Cambodia by Maisie Caldwell aged 8, and another one about Afghanistan. And Maya E. Knierim, for example, has a story about a sea dragon set in the South China Sea.

Another international young lady, Michelle Lee who was born in South Korea, and currently lives in Europe, writes about being at a boarding school overseas.

And what do the stories tell us about our listeners interests?

We can see a great deal of concern for animals with stories about ponies and stray dogs and cats, and quite a lot set in natural surroundings featuring something like a magic wind or a magic peach tree. And here’s a very nice example of that genre. It’s a story about being turned into a Butterfly by Grace Noonan aged .10 years old, and can you read us an Extract Elizabeth?

Have you ever wanted to fly? Well, my friend, Molly Micawits, had this experience. But no, not in a plane, but as a butterfly. Yes, a butterfly! Would you like me to tell you the story? Well, I am sure it will be great, because I’m Molly Micawits!

One day in mid June, I was wondering what I could do. My mom was getting annoyed that I kept asking her silly questions like “Mom, why does everyone HAVE to stay on the ground? Why can’t we float?” All the sudden she told me to go take a walk in the meadow. I decided that that was a pretty good idea so I went to the coat room to get my jacket. I was just starting my walk when I started to get dozy. All the sudden, I fell into the meadow. Luckily, the meadow was nice and soft. I slept for a while until I felt this tingling feeling. I woke up not to find the meadow, but a whole new world. I then realized that I had been transformed into a butterfly.

And there were lots of very good stories in this age range, and unfortunately there isn’t time to mention them all,

So we are getting more grown up now. Are the stories getting more sophisticated?

Yes, the age range of Storynory listeners is quite wide and that’s reflected in the competition entries. The stories by older writers have similar themes, but a bit more form and shape to the plot. and structure.

We’d like to hear one, by Katie Giffin aged 12, and she tells me that it’s based on a conversation with her dad who is a scuba diver. In fact, she’s turned the story around, and told it from the point of view of a clam, and it’s a story within a story, which is quite a sophisticated structure. It’s called USO and if you want to know what U.S.0 stands for, you’ll have to listen on.

Once upon a time in the reefs around the island of St. Thomas, a clam was coming home to his beloved family.

“Honey, I’m home!” Mr. Clam called out as he slid into his sand home. Mrs. Clam, his wife, came out from the kitchen with a green-stained apron on and his six children ran after her from the living room.

“Hi, honey! How did work go?” Mrs. Clam asked.

“Yeah, Daddy, yeah! How did work go?!” His kids surrounded him excitedly.

Mr. Clam, feeling a little claustrophobic, said, “Whoa, whoa! Please, move!” he chuckled.

“Sor-ry.” all the little clams chimed in unison, making the word two-syllables.

“Well I had an . . . interesting day . . . I’ll tell you about it at dinner.” Mr. Clam asked. “Is dinner done yet?”

“Yes, it is. I made plankton soup,” replied his wife.

“Yum! My favorite.” He nodded, seeming to agree with himself. “Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you all about my day while we eat.” The little clams jumped to sit down. Mr. and Mrs. Clam sat down after them.

As Mrs. Clam ladled out the thick, green plankton soup Mr. Clam began his tale. “Today there was a strong current. It was a bit harder for me to cling to the rock while I worked. One especially mean, hungry fish came and with one flawless sweep of his tail, he knocked me right out of my protected spot on the rock.”

At hearing this, all the kids gasped and shouted, “Oh no, Daddy!”

“Yes, he did! Well, as I was saying, the fish knocked me right off the rock! I tumbled, over and over, down to the sandy bottom. I promptly opened my shell to move, when the vicious fish swooped in to eat me! Worse yet, more fish came! There were what seemed to be hundreds of fish swimming all around me. They were flashing their teeth, trying to get at me. I shut my mouth very quickly! The fish continued to swarm all around me, when off in the distance a very strange creature swam up. It was a U.S.O!”

“An unidentified swimming object!” gasped his family in unison.

“The U.S.O’s face was barely visible. It was hidden by a strange plastic . . . thing. That’s the only way to describe it! It had two funny sections each in an oval shape. Then there was a nose shaped section too, under the ovals. That covered the upper part of his face. The lower part was covered by a hose attached to the metal cylinder on his back. The hose was actually stuck in his mouth!” All the clams snickered.

Instead of the usual tail fin that fish have, he had two long, rectangular fins. He swam up to me, shooing away the hungry fish. He gently picked me up and cradled me in his hand. Then he set me back on my work ledge. Amazing how he knew exactly where I was meant to go, isn’t it?”

“Yes, yes.” agreed all the little clams.

“I am very thankful to that U.S.O. Your husband and Daddy wouldn’t be here today without him.” There was a moment of silence to think about the story Mr. Clam had told, and to silently thank that special U.S.O.

At almost that very time, in the hills of St. Thomas, a scuba diver was sitting down to dinner with his family.
“Any interesting happen at work today, Dad?” asked his expectant children.

“Well, I saved a clam . . .

That was USO by Katie Giffin.

It was very amusing. And does the age range go older still?

Yes, we also invited grown ups to enter, though we said they wouldn’t be able to win a Sweetpea3, so it’s just for the honour, so to speak ..

And any stories you liked from the grown ups?

Lots, but there was a character I found particularly endearing. His name is Percival the Dragon, and he’s the creation of Andrew Mitchell who is 35 years old, and he wrote it with Sharon Mitchell who says that she is Andrew’s mother, and so perhaps a bit older. So let’s hear a little bit of Percival of the Dragon.

When he reached a ledge overlooking a flickering mountain valley, Percival stopped.  Peering over the rim, the dragon stared down the slope at the slowly bubbling lava.  Smiling, Percival scrambled over rippling rocks that looked like weird frozen waves on a hard black ocean.  Crouched beside a small runoff pool, he lapped lava like a happy cat with a bowl of cream.  Percival sighed blissfully as the warmth spread through his body.  He stretched his neck and blew some very satisfactory smoke rings.

 The dragon turned away from the volcano.  He was feeling better, and the day seemed less depressing, but he was very hungry.  Percival thought about Sir Maldwyn’s fields, and his mouth began to water as he thought about the cabbages and other tasty food growing there.  He really liked vegetables. 

Thanks Elizabeth. That was an extract from the rather lengthy but very charming Percival The Dragon. Also from the grown up tales, I wanted to mention Tangleweed the Goblin with some very detailed, slightly old world illustrations by Steven Corps. And a special mention goes to the Magic Paisleys by By Carolyn Fay. It has really nice beginning that makes you want to read on.

Hello, my name is Arden Paisley. Yesterday, my mum and I made a special secret discovery.

Do you want to know what it was?

I’ll tell you, but you must not tell anyone, especially not Spoony Anna Gray. She would be so jealous and she’d never speak to me again.

I love the bit about don’t tell anyone, especially especially not Spoony Anna Gray. But we are running out of time, so if you want to find out what the secret is, you’ll have to read The Magic Paisleys by Carolyn Fay on the site.

So we’ve heard that our audience has some very talented writers, but what about the artists among them? Did any send us their own illustrations?

A few did, and they were really very nice indeed. I have to mention the very charming Wave Monkey by Morgan Ross, A very beautifully illustrated and hand written story about squirrels by Shutri Parthasarthy and a story by Cindy Chen with her pencil drawings of an ingenious rat called Ron who uses a needle to fight his enemy, a cat called Anya. And this is the very last extract for today.

Ron raised his needle and pointed it at Anya.

“So, you wanna fight, huh?” Anya let go of his tail.

“Well, of course, if we did, I would win, because, after all, a three year-old rat couldn’t beat an eighteen-year-old cat, could it?”??Ron threw the needle at Anya, but she was too fast and dodged it quickly. Anya picked him up, put him in the sink, stuck cotton in the plug, and turned on the water. She put a rotten banana inside, so that it stank. Then she walked away. “GET ME OUT OF HEEEEERRRRREEEEE!” Ron screamed. Finally, his sister, Felicia heard him and came to his rescue.

So Hugh, you and Bertie have had a hard job choosing the winners.

Yes we have. And in fact there were so many more stories that I would have liked you to read out for us, but the programme would go on and on for ever and ever. We find it just so hard to decide.

Ok, but you’ve got to choose. Which two writers are going to win the Sweetpea3 MP3 Players? ??Well this is really, really hard, but What do you think Bertie? Ok, we very much liked the story about the drop of water by Emma Matheson, aged 7. It’s so short. but it’s just so perfect.

Well done Emma ! And one more Hugh…

Errr Bertie…. help me here…

come on boys…

Well I do find I keep coming back to The Flower by Alainna Wigginton, aged 8. And of course we heard both those stories earlier on in the programme.

Fantastic. A lovely choice. Emma and Alainna we’ll need your addresses so that the Sweetpea3 Toy company can send you the MP3 players.

Yes we’ll be in touch. And I just want to say another big Thank You to Sweetpea3 for helping us encourage young writing. Sweetpea3 is a Canadian company and they’ve won awards for their children’s mp3 player. If you weren’t one of the two lucky winners, you can buy a player via the links on Storynory.com.

So that wraps up the Easter 2010 Story Writing Competition

Except to say that can read all the entries on the site – if you go to Storynory.com look for the You section.

( And it may be a couple of weeks before all the texts go up on the site. I’m sorry about that, but it’s got mixed up with a rather big technical update that we are doing, but they will be appearing in due course. )

So from me Elizabeth,

And from me Hugh

Goodbye.

Contact: elizabeth.donnelly@cssd.ac.uk

According to Google Analytics, Storynory.com received 149,468 visits, with 602,261 page views.

Our traffic followed an familiar pattern, with a surge before the half term holiday as people filled up with stories to take away with them. The week of half term was quieter, and then traffic picked up again as people returned.

Feedback suggests our Astropup series has been a hit. One mum on Twitter tells us that her son has played an episode twenty times. We’ve received a colouring-in of Astropup’s portrait, and loads of encouraging comments.

Not everyone is a fan of our poetry – as in Orpheus – but experience tells us the more grown-up episodes get appreciation which comes in later via emails and other contact. Our aim is to have a “rich mixture” of content – from the edifying to the entertaining.

We don’t have up-to-date figures for sales of our new App (by Wizzard) but we know that we’ve sold a few hundred. We receive a dollar for each sale, and we need every cent we can get to pay actors first and foremost, and increasingly to employ illustrators and musicians. We are working hard to add weekly bonus content to the app in the form of factual background talks. We got into this paid-for model by accident. Wizzard made the app for us, and we only later woke up to the fact that people expect extras when they’ve paid for something. We are interested to see how this works out.

The stories for our story-writing competition are steadily coming in, but not quite as many as the noise in the comments section would suggest. There are still a few weeks to go.

It’s clear from the comments that our followers are missing Natasha, but Richard has been brilliant and is building his own fan base. We have recently heard a little word from the ever-illusive Natasha, but no firm news yet about her return. We have loads of plans, including some tentative ideas about stand-alone audio books, perhaps sold at a small price in the Apple store, so when she does finally turn up at the pond there will be plenty of work for her to do ! We also will be introducing a new voice to Storynory soon – so keep listening.

To everyone, thank you for listening to us. We do these stories for you.

We’ve just added our first piece of bonus content – a 15 minute story read by Natasha which you can’t hear anywhere else. It’s a cute story which we dug out of our secret store of treasures specially for the app. We are going to be adding more bonus content regularly including factual pieces – such as short talks on topics of interest to kids including dragons, dinosaurs, famous children’s authors, sport, history…. There will also be some short fables, rhymes, twisters – an eclectic collection of little goodies posted once a week.

If you use our app, you receive our latest story without syncing your iPhone or iPod. Each story comes with a PDF with the full text of the story and a picture which you can download as wallpaper for your device. Just look under extras on individual episodes to find these.

It’s early days for our app. Apparently it’s selling well in Asia. We’ve had a couple of harsh reviews in the US page of the app store. One says it doesn’t work. Well it does. The other bemoans the lack of bonus content – which is a fairer comment – but it’s there now. If you enjoy our app, we would really appreciate it if you say something nice about it in the store to redress these comments. It’s quite an effort to produce a free story every week, let alone bonus content. It’s all a bit of a labour of love, and we want happy customers. There’s no other reason to do Storynory.

Our thanks to Sweetpea3 for sponsoring the competition. Check out their MP3 player which is made especially with kids in mind.

Here are the rules:

1. Send us your story by 21 March 2010 to bertie@storynory.com
2. Tell us your date of birth
3. The story must be entirely your own work
4. The story must be suitable for children
5. You can be any age to enter – but to win a prize you must be thirteen years old or younger.
6. We aim to publish the TEXTS of All entries by EVERYONE of ANY age who enters – but will only do so if we deem them suitable for Storynory.
7. By entering this competition, you are giving us permission to publish your story.
8. The writers of the two stories that we judge to be best will win a Sweetpea3 MP3 player dispatched by Sweetpea3.
9. The story that we judge best will be read, recorded and published as AUDIO and TEXT on the Storynory website and podcast.
10. The story should not be longer than 1700 words.
11. Our decision is final, but of course our judgment is subjective, and you must promise us that if you don’t win, you won’t be put off writing, because life is inevitably just a little bit unfair, and besides, writers have to be tough because there’s an awful lot of rejection and criticism to get used to.

The series of ten stories was an experiment for us. The atmosphere is very different from the beautiful Nordic settings of The Snow Queen or The Little Mermaid that our core audience loves. The Gladys stories are set in suburban modern Britain, and the girls spend a lot of time hanging around bus stops and shopping centres. The older sisters are not very admirable, and seem to think that they deserve their fifteen minutes of fame on a plate. Even I started off by disliking the sisters. But I warmed to them as the story went along.

We know from some comments on Facebook that the chiX were not every body’s cup of tea. But we also know from the nagging message on this site, constantly demanding “the next Gladys”, that she has a considerable following around the world.

We were worried that the stories might be a little old for some of our listeners, as the themes are quite teenage. But in the main, it seems that the same listeners who like Katie the Witch also appreciate Gladys. Of course she appeals mainly to girls, but age has not been an issue.

The heroine of the story is the hard working and sensible Gladys who isn’t even in the band because she is too young and too geeky. She is often underrated and treated unfairly, and the listeners identify with her and want her efforts to be rewarded. And we identify with her too. We know what it feels like to be struggling for recognition.

We weren’t trying to be trendy when we placed the girls in a single parent family with a more or less useless Dad. Nor when we gave them a decidedly “chavvy” style were we celebrating vulgarity. To a certain extent we were venting our feelings against Modern Britain rather that promoting it, but it might not have quite come across that way.

The humour of Gladys is quite dry. We laughed a lot during the recordings, and even we weren’t quite sure why we found it funny. But Gladys is a real heroine, and underneath it’s a serious story about hard work, set backs, determination, and learning to appreciate other people’s talents.

Early on in the series, Natasha did some singing to a backing track. But towards the end we felt that Gladys deserved something more polished and we hired some musicians to record the chiX song Life is a Circus. We didn’t dumb it down. It’s quite a grown up song, but it proved popular, and we really enjoyed doing it. You may also notice that we now have original pictures for all the stories by Tania Fernandes.

Sometimes it amazed me that I could find a load of teenage stuff inside me when I wrote the stories. I think it surprised Natasha too. Natasha’s feedback from the early chapters really helped the story advance in the later chapters. As ever, her voices helped the characters develop and her interpretation looped back into the writing. It was very much her idea that when the chiX achieved fame, they should find out that it wasn’t quite all it was cracked up to be, or at least, there were drawbacks. I suppose that’s the sort of problem that we might like to have one day !

I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas and  a Very Happy New Year!

from

Natasha

We have been subscribers for two years now to Storynory. My children (now 8 and 6) could not imagine life without it… nor could I. Natasha is the prefect story-reader, for this podcast, and my entire family has fallen in love with her reading of such a diverse body of stories, both old and new. Our current fav is the Wicked Uncle.. you have to catch the entire series. Thank you Storynory, thank you Audible ! Our car rides are a completely new experience due to the excitement and fantasy that this has brought to our lives. Bravo ! I would recommend this to anyone with children of all ages (and I do)!

Thank you Natasha. My daughter absolutely loves Storynory and sometimes gets addicted to a single story (like this winter when we had to listen to Christmas in Iceland on repeat every night at bedtime for literally 2 months). She also loves the Gladys stories and has already learned “Life is a Circus” on the piano. Thank you for the amazing work.

There are lots of other lovely comments on the site, and in iTunes and on Facebook, and Twiter, as well as in emails. I couldn’t pick them all out. But thank to everyone because this is what makes it worthwhile for us.

This is what Hugh says about himself:

“I split my time (and my brain) between writing and recording stories for Storynory, and doing technical stuff for websites. The English language is my first love, but I also have to cram in a good smattering of computer languages. Sometimes it all drives me a bit crazy.

These days I write almost all the stories for Storynory that aren’t actually by classic authors. I adapt stories from around the world – Greek Myths, Japanese legends, Arthurian romances, etc, and I write the stories about Prince Bertie, Katie the Witch, The Unpopular Beauty, Gladys, and so forth (if you listen to Storynory you will know who these characters are).

I have found that working with Natasha for four years, listening to her frank and very perceptive comments, and listening to her read my words back so beautifully, has been a great privilege. She’s helped my writing enormously. These days I am also very lucky to work with Elizabeth and Richard.

The weekly schedule for Storynory is demanding, but I always compare it to the early days of the Beatles. Long ago, I read that the Fab Four weren’t very Fab when they went to Hamburg before they were famous. In Germany, they had a regular slot playing in a club, night after night after night, and that’s how they became good. Storynory is a bit like that. We just keep going, keep to the schedule, make our mistakes, learn, and move on.

I’m also the sound-engineer. I record the narration and spend a surprisingly large amount of time editing and mastering the audio, finding a picture, and uploading the final result to the site and into iTunes. I aim to get this done every Sunday, but have been known to let the deadline slip to Monday lunchtime. At any rate, I do make sure we get our story out every week, come what may.

And then, believe it or not, I think. I think about where Storynory is going, and how we are going to get there. Right now I am thinking about more music, more pictures, more audio “theatre”, and all about that little buzz-word “app”.

I used to be a journalist. I spent some time in Russia (1990-1993) and am married to a Russian. I am planning a “magnum opus” for Storynory that will be set in Russia, but somehow I haven’t quite written it yet.

I have a small son and another on the way. I did ten years at the BBC World Service where I got my background in all things audio and started to write for the net. Now I try to get all that journalese out of my head and write proper English.

A very long time ago I did Classics at Oxford. Regular listeners to Storynory will recognise my interest in the ancient world.

But one thing many Storynory listeners won’t really know is my name. All the stories are written under the pen-name of “Bertie.”

This clever feature is thanks to a technical change by Wizzard, who host our audio and broker our sponsorship deal. Audible have always only paid us on the basis of our North American audience, but in the past we had to play the book recommendation to everyone, no matter where they are. We are pleased about this change because we realise that listening to a book recommendation on every story can get in the way of the enjoyment – but we hope it’s fine for most people if the recommendations are on only a few of the stories. We are also working through our older stories manually removing the older ads.

In general we hope that Audible is a welcome service for you. We believe that Audible complements our offering because it has so many book that we simply can’t do – even if we had the time we don’t have the copyright.

If you are new to Audible, they have a special Thanksgiving offer. You can download a free book without filling in any card details. It’s a great way to get started.

I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has helped us by buying an audio book from Audible. Keeping our sponsor happy also supports Storynory – because we do run this on a very tight budget.

If you need an ad-free story for school or a similar good reason, then you can always email us and we’ll see what we can do.

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8-O 8-O

:twisted: :twisted

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:roll: :roll:

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:-x :-x

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:mrgreen: :mrgreen:

“I found out about your site from other cochlear implant user that was before Christmas and now i look forward to hear new stories.. I still use the script to help me follow what the story says. I use it as my listening skill training every weekend using my iPod and print out of the script.”

It’s the sort of message that really delights us and keeps us going. We’ve always understood the importance of texts to young readers, language learners, and others who just like to read along. But of course they are very important to those with impaired hearing.

We have ambitions to add more music to our stories, but we realise – thanks to this listener pointing it out – that we should not mix music under the words as it makes them harder to catch.

And just as a reminder to others, our stories are printer-friendly. Just use file / print in your web browser and it should print a clutter free story. And our very recent stories have the texts embedded in the MP3 file, so you should be able to read them off the screen of an iPhone or iPod touch.

Just double click the page and you will be presented with a long list of languages. After selecting yours, you can now double click any word for a quick translation. It’s all done by the magic of computers, which sometimes get it wrong, but on the whole language-learners tell us that they find this tool useful.

Check back for more news here soon.

Double-click a word on the page. A menu of languages will pop-up. Select your language . Now any word you double-click will give you a pop-up translation.

The menu is quite long, and you may have to scroll down the page to see your language.

To reload this service, either refresh the page or go to another page.

Some words have more than one meaning, and the computer does not always get the right context, but it is accurate on most occasions.

Languages currently on offer are :

Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian (Farsi), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese.

This service works with Google Translate and jQuery SundayMorning. We will add other languages as soon as Google adds them to its service.

How do I play an audio story on my computer?

Just press the play button:

How do I download a story to my computer?

Look for the link that says:

Download the audio to your computer (right click, save as)

Right Click the link (on a Mac ctrl-click), and you will see a pop-up box. Select “Save Target As” or “Save Link As” and save to your computer.

How do I put your latest stories onto my iPod?

The easiest way to put our latest stories onto your iPod is to subscribe (for free) with iTunes. This link will launch iTunes. iTunes is a free software application made by Apple with versions for both Mac and PC. Once our stories are in your iTunes library, they will sync with your iPod next time you plug your iPod into your computer .

How do I put your stories onto my MP3 Player (it’s not an iPod)?

All MP3 players are a bit different, but with most it’s quite easy. Download and save some stories to your desktop or a folder on your computer. Plug your MP3 player into your computer via the USB. On a PC open up “My Computer”. On a MAC open the finder (the square icon with a face). You should be able to see an external drive represented there. This is your MP3 player. Simply drag our story files onto it. That should transfer them.

Can you email your stories to me every week?

Yes, please subscribe to our email service here. Please use the email address of somebody who is 13 years or older (perhaps mum or dad’s email if you are a kid). You will receive an email asking you to confirm that you want to subscribe. Please remember to confirm.

How do I put other stories (not just your latest) onto my iPod?

Go to one of our archive pages (such as “Original Stories“). You will see that each of our sub-categories has its own feed.

• Category Feed

Copy the URL (web address) of the feed. Open up iTunes. Click the “Advanced” button at the top of iTunes. Select “Subscribe to Podcast” from the drop-down menu. Paste the URL into the dialogue box. You are now subscribed to that category.

Why don’t you have more stories on your iTunes feed?

There are some technical reasons, but see above…. all our categories have their own feeds.

How do I make iTunes download individual stories from your feed?

If you have subscribed to Storynory, click “Podcasts” in the left menu of iTunes. Look for our icon (or it might show an picture from one of our stories). Click the picture. You will see a list of our stories with options to “Get All” or just to “Get” an individual episode. Click the appropriate button.

I’m tying to download your stories, but it’s not working properly, what’s happening?

We are really sorry, but the internet is a strange place and there are sometimes blocks on the way between our server and your computer. The blockages are usually temporary and clear after an hour or so. If you are at school or work, it could be that a firewall prevents MP3 downloads. All our audio is hosted on the Libsyn network which serves about a billion downloads a year, so it’s not lack of capacity at our end.

Can I use your stories in my school, kindergarten, or hospital?

Although our stories are copyrighted, we do allow you to use them in schools and educational / medical / therapeutic institutions so long as you do not sell them or remove any references we make to storynory.com. You may print the texts and copy the audio so long as it is for use in your own school, nursery, family etc. Wider commercial use is not allowed. If in doubt, you can always email bertie@storynory.com and we usually reply swiftly.

Can I rebroadcast, distribute, print as a book, or sell your stories in some way?

Not without our permission. Please get in touch – bertie@storynory.com.

Can I link to you or write up my story on my blog?

Yes, please do. You can use our icon for reviews. http://storynory.com/images/bertie-icon.jpg

Why do you allow critical and ungrammatical comments on Storynory?

Children clearly enjoy the interaction with our stories via the comments section. Commenting on Storynory is entirely safe because we do not ask for email addresses or identification. We do moderate the comments before they appear, and we disallow anything offensive, totally non-nonsensical, or in a language we do not understand. But we do allow reasonable criticism because it would be cheating not to. That said, we have the last say. If we think criticism is gratuitous or just mucking around, we don’t let it through. As for grammar, we haven’t got time to change it, and besides we want the comments to be authentic.

Why didn’t you reply to my comment, Bertie?

There are so many comments, but Bertie tries to reply to as many as possible. Usually, if you really, really insist, you will get a reply. But please don’t pester him too much !

Can I email you, Bertie / Natasha, and will you be my friend?

We prefer kids to use the anonymous comments section. Grown-ups can email us any time at bertie@storynory.com.

How do you make money from free stories?

Well it is a bit of a struggle, but we do have Google ads, and we are grateful to AudibleKids for sponsoring us. If you buy an audio book from AudibleKids via the link from our site, it helps keep them happy with us.

Why don’t you charge for stories?

We want our stories to reach as many people as possible.

Can you help us build a site as good as yours?

We have a consultancy, Blog Relations . We can build a great site at a reasonable price, and we can advise on building traffic, but in the end it’s up to you to win-over the audience.

When will Bertie turn back into a Prince?

That day could mark the end of his stories, so not just yet.

Download the audio to your computer (right click, save as)

And over to YOU! Hear Jack and the Beanstalk told by Children in their own voices, and in their own words.

This is the result of the first Storynory Workshop. Natasha helped a group of children prepare to record their own version of this famous fairy tale. For two hours on Sunday afternoon, they developed their parts through games, physical actions and other creative devices. And towards the end of the workshop they gathered around The Storynory Microphone and told us Jack and the Beanstalk in their own way.

We are planning to do more of these workshops in and around London to start with. If you are interested, please email bertie@storynory.com. And we are also interested in hearing from any schools.

(The Little Mermaid Part Two follows shortly !!!!)

Many thanks to our talented group of young story-tellers: Emerald, Chrystal, Isabel, Maria, Jasmine,Eleanor,Joe, Victoria, Alexander,Amelia, Genevieve, Jonah, Lucy, Toby, Eleanor,

Download the audio

In Seo from Korea has sent us both Birthday and New Year Greets. And Happy New Year to you In Seo !

And thanks for recommending Baba Yaga