In a significant move for the young children’s audio startup, Yoto, Jessica Tarrant, previously editorial director at Hachette (where she was responsible for the Orchard fiction list, and more recently the children’s audio list) has been appointed as content director.

Yoto launched its first hardware product on Kickstarter in November 2017, reaching its funding target after only 5 days. The product shipped in time for Christmas 2018 and since then Yoto has partnered with the Roald Dahl company to create new content based on his classic stories. 

Yoto was created by Ben Drury (founder of 7Digital) and Filip (the tech wizard) in 2015 with the aim of making exciting technology and music products that children can control without screens.

“Most streaming services are created by adults for adults, and it shows,” argues Ben. “They are essentially databases which you access via text queries, a song title or artist, for instance. This doesn’t work for children. With Yoto we have drawn on Montessori principles to give children a satisfying, tactile experience. You put the card in the slot and it plays. And with no screen, no microphone and no camera, we think we have answered the real concerns parents have about technology for kids.”

Yoto features its own carefully connected smart speaker that children control with a physical card.

ACHUKA would be very interested to hear from any families who are using Yoto.

Extract from receommended interview with Steven Malk, of Writers House Literary Agency

What are some current trends you’ve noticed in the children’s publishing world? Do you have any predictions for future growth in the children’s market?

I’ve definitely noted the explosion of graphic novels and heavily illustrated books for older readers, which I find super heartening. There’s a rise in different forms and formats for nonfiction, which for me, as a former history and poli sci major, is very gratifying.

What’s on your manuscript wish list at the moment?

I love coming across a voice I haven’t read before. I love books that open windows into a wide range of experiences. Not many people know it, but I’m a huge fan of mysteries and read them in my spare time whenever I can. I’d love to find a great mystery, especially a mystery with real emotional stakes and a setting we haven’t seen before. I’ve always been a big fan of flawed or unreliable narrators as protagonists.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-industry-news/article/80805-q-a-with-children-s-book-agent-steven-malk.html

Can warmly recommend a big feature interview with Malorie Blackman (whose new ‘Noughts & Crosses’ novel, Crossfire, is published early next month)in last weekend’s Sunday Times Magazine. Here is a short extract:

In her 29 years as a published author, however, she has only ever had one black editor. The publishing industry remains overwhelmingly white, and one black novelist Blackman knows had a family suppertime scene rejected on the grounds that, “ this is not authentic enough because black people don’t eat spaghetti bolognese”. Her eyes widen. “I kid you not. So when you’re representing your life and being told by the gatekeepers that it’s not the black experience — because you’ve got a black family eating spaghetti bolognese — it’s not a level playing field. I do have a problem when authentic voices aren’t being allowed the same opportunities to publish their stories that perhaps white authors are.”

For Blackman, the big concern about YA fiction is the current fall in sales. In February, the Bookseller reported they had dropped to their lowest level in 11 years — and she thinks she knows why. Michael Gove’s reforms to the English curriculum are, she fears, “going to kill the love of reading stone dead. You have to engage kids in reading for pleasure. By the time they reach secondary school, they’re not going to be keen on reading if in primary school they’ve been told to underline all the adverbs and count all the adjectives.” She is equally impatient with the idea that children should only read the classics and is a big fan of graphic novels.“This idea of, ‘My child’s only reading comics, what do I do?’ Easy. Buy them more comics!”

The Sunday Times

The latest book from David Macaulay (best known for The Way Things Work) is not yet published in the UK, but the American edition can be ordered from Amazon).

From Valley News
https://www.vnews.com/Bookstock-featured-author-David-Macaulay-hopes-new-book-inspires-people-to-pay-attention-27216247

Crossing on Time, published in May by Roaring Brook Press, showcases the grand steamship that triumphed in the global rivalry to build the fastest and best ocean liner and capped a vital era in transportation.

It also marks the first time Macaulay has made an appearance in one of his own books. The SS United States carried Macaulay, his mother, brother and sister from Bolton, England, to their new home in the United States in 1957, when he was 10 years old.