How are children's audio stories designed?

• Lunii, Toniebox, Merlin, Joyeuse... Digital storytellers are invited under the soap at Christmas, and fill entire shelves in toy stores.

• They each have their specificity to offer audio stories to children, whether adaptations of licenses or original content.

• Writing, voice, sound illustration, interactivity, and even listening, audio stories for children have changed with the digital revolution.

They invited themselves under the Christmas tree last Christmas, take up entire shelves in toy stores, and are called Lunii, Joyeuse, Fabo, Bookinou, Toonies, Yoto Player, Ocarina, Merlin, Mon Petit Morphée… Digital storytellers know a real boom in recent years, directly linked to the digital revolution, the development and even the advent of audio and podcasting.

The success of

on France Inter during the first confinement is proof of this.

But digital storytellers are nothing without their content, mostly children's stories, but also songs, meditations, quizzes, etc.

So, of course, children's audio stories have been around forever, from the old 45s to the timeless radio narrative, but with the diverse offering of storytellers and podcasts comes a new way of designing and telling stories.

Being an actor in stories is a trainer for the imagination

Each digital storyteller has a bit of its specificity, as our high-tech journalist Christophe Sefrin explains in his test bench: NFC cards for the Yoto Player, the double Bayard and Radio France catalog for the Merlin, meditation for Mon Petit Morphée or interactivity and tree structure for Lunii and its Story Factory, which opened the market five years ago.

“The cognitive aspect is very important and at the foundation of the history of Lunii, explains its editorial director Marine Baudoin.

It is proved that with motor action the child remembers better, develops his memory.

Being an actor is very formative for the mind.

»

The Faba like the Toniebox uses figurines which, once placed on the storyteller, launch stories and songs.

"The Toniebox is like a small theatre, and the small figurine, already a part of the story, of the universe in the child will immerse itself," says Amélia Ouyed, head of audio production at Tonies.

In addition, there is a strong attachment to the figurine, they can collect them, play with them, imagine their own stories.

Originally, the creators, two German dads, noted the overexposure of children to screens, and looked for a product that would keep them away from it and develop their imagination, their vocabulary.

" And it works ?

“Asterix”, “Babar”, “Paw Patrol”… The strength of licenses

So, of course, the child will go for the figurines of the heroes and heroines he already knows: Asterix, Peppa Pig, Heidi, Woody from

, Chase from

or the Snow Queen.

This is the power of attraction of licenses, and we also find it at Lunii with the adventures of Babar, Mickey, Monsieur Madame or Maestro from

"Even with licenses, we are in original creation, which represents more than 80% of our catalog, says Marine Baudoin de Lunii.

For example, for

by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, adapting the work stricto sensu made little sense, especially for 5-year-old children.

We wanted to tell it at the height of a child, and created, with the author Fabrice Colin, a story where our house heroes, Suzanne and Gaston, travel to asteroid B612 and dream with the Little Prince.

» For Babar and Monsieur Madame, these are also unpublished stories, « a desire of the rights holders not to compete with children's books ».

Same work of adaptation and creation at Tonies.

"For

, we recovered the English scripts of the episodes, which were translated, rewritten, before leaving for the recording studio with the official voices of the cartoon, details Amélia Ouyed.

And a voice for narration.

On

, it's a little different, it is indeed the audio of the cartoon, and we worked with audio descriptors, specialized in youth, for the narrative part which explains the images.

It's the French voice of Morgan Freeman!

Lunii, for its part, offers old tales from the 1950s and 1960s (Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, etc.), from records kept at the National Library of France.

"It's a bit of archeology and it helps to awaken heritage, to show that children's literature has evolved," comments the editorial director.

We had been warned that the children were not going to hang on because the voices or the vocabulary are not current enough?

But they love it.

»

Looking for authors

Tonies will continue to exploit known licenses, with for example a partnership with the Millimages animation studio (Molang, Didou, Mouk) and soon with major children's publishing houses.

About fifty figurines are thus planned for 2022. “These strong licenses allow a smooth transition from screens to audio books, then an opening to our original content”, for the head of audio production Amélia Ouyed.

Lunii, the Story Factory, has always been making its own stories.

“We are going to look for children's authors for their feathers, because they would adapt very well to the Lunii universe, explains Marine Baudoin.

This is the case recently of Christophe Mauri, the author of 

at Gallimart Jeunesse, for

I love his modern, fantastical, lively writing, I was sure it would lend itself well to audio.

»

"The most important thing is the transmission"

Léonard Billot, the co-creator of

with Lola Costantini, calls on very different authors, from Antoine Dole and Zep from youth comics with their respective bestsellers

and

, to contemporary writers Nicolas Mathieu, Simon Liberati, Claire Berest and comedians Thomas VDB and Nicole Ferroni.

"It's about offering children very popular authors, others less known, some more demanding, poets, cartoonists, and finally many authors for adults who are writing for children for the first time, highlights perspective the journalist and producer.

This allows children to discover literature in the broad, rich and protean sense, as well as not to prioritize.

There is not a legitimate culture and another illegitimate.

The most important is the transmission.

»

A story and... Oli

was born from this idea.

Léonard Billot was babysitting his great-niece, and after telling her stories, he looked for something to make her listen to.

Come on, why not read Oscar Wilde, “the perched thing, not at all suitable for children”.

He also remembers that his writer father told him stories in the evenings, but also put

in the hands at 11 years old: “I didn't understand anything, and was even disgusted with Sarte for a long time, but the intention was good.

He wanted to share with me a work he loved.

I said to myself that there was a link to be created between parents and children around literature.

“It is with his father that Léonard Billot conceives the first story, before being “caught up by Radio France”.

His work is now both collection director and artistic director, with the choice of authors and authors, but also of "known, recognizable" voices: "it is a logic of programming, inherent in the media and radio".

"Children's books have beautiful illustrations, and this is the same"

Once in the recording studio, all market players insist on the importance of voices, of course, but also and above all of sound design.

"Children's books always have beautiful illustrations, and it's the same here," adds Amélia Ouyed from Tonies.

The music, the sound effects, everything contributes to creating an immersive experience.

" Marine Baudoin de Lunii agrees: "There is a real editorialization, knowing what noise to use to capture the child's attention, when to lower the music, etc.

»

Léonard Billot likes to repeat that he didn't invent hot water either with

, that audio stories for children have always existed on disc, cassette or CD.

On the other hand, the practice of listening is new, at the child's pace, both dematerialized and rematerialized, even interactive, with digital storytellers.

Why do we always read the same stories to children?

Society

Pass on the pleasure of reading to children in seven tips

• Books

• Child

• Literature

• Culture

• Youth

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