Choose from these exciting, original kids’ audio stories.

Clem the Detective Dog
Ralphie The Gopher
Sheriff Daisy & Deputy Bud
Rainbow of the Sioux
The Monotonia Chronicles
Tibbodnock Stories
Fiona the Smart Ghost
Ivan the Not-So-Terrible
Nikki the Invisible Girl
Sarabel to the Rescue

Storytelling Tip No 1: The YoYo On the Wall

Listen to Storytelling Tip No 1 or read it below:

Tall Tales Audio presents: Storytelling Tips with Jake Warner. Each episode, Jake will provide another tip for improving your storytelling skills. Then, he’ll tell a story using that tip. This week’s tip: The Yoyo on the Wall.

Rich: Jake, I’m curious about this tip. How do we work the yoyo on the wall into a story?

Jake: When you’re lying on a kid’s bed, or when you’re sitting and telling a story to a child, often you get a little stuck, and you have that little moment where you say, “What am I going to possibly say that’s going to be fun?” And one great method is to look around on the walls and pick something out that will get your creativity going. It might be a picture of an alligator, it might be a picture of a dinosaur, it might be a picture of a truck. In this case, I’m sitting here at Sutro Studios doing this little tape, and I’m imagining I’m telling stories to a kid, and I’m looking up and there’s a picture for some reason of a giant yoyo on the wall, painted by a guy named Paul Dodd, and I’m just attracted to the picture, and so I’m using that as my jumping-off place.

Rich: Okay, Jake, let’s hear you use that tip in a story.

Jake: The Yoyo on the Wall: Ben’s mom and dad had gotten a divorce when he was tiny, and he had moved in with his grandparents, who he loved very much. But now he was seven years old, and was going to live with his dad, who had remarried. This led to three big problems: First, Ben hardly knew his new step-mom. What if he didn’t like her? Or even worse… what if she didn’t like him? Ben’s second problem was that his new house was in a strange town, where he felt completely lost. And Ben’s third problem was that he had to start at a new school, with all new kids. If you’ve ever done anything like that, you know how scary it can be.

On a Saturday morning before the first Monday of school, Ben, his dad, and his step-mom moved into their new house. That was scary enough, but then on Sunday… Sunday was the day before he had to go to the new school. Ben felt so sad, and so lonely, that he hardly came out of his room.

Monday morning, Ben got up early to walk the four blocks to his new school. Getting ready to leave the house he felt just about as miserable as a kid could feel – so miserable that he couldn’t eat a bite of his breakfast. But then his step-mom handed him a package. When Ben unwrapped it he saw that it was a red yoyo – a yoyo that looked like any other yoyo, except for one thing: It was five times bigger. So big, that when Ben tried it, it barely went up and down. Seeing that he was a tiny bit confused, his stepmother said, “Just put it in your backpack, and take it along to school.”

Ben hadn’t even walked a block, when the giant yoyo began to talk to him in a friendly sort of way. It didn’t say anything special, just asked him a few riddles, told him a stupid joke, which went like this: “How do you keep flies out of the kitchen?” When Ben, after a few steps, said, “I don’t know,” the giant yoyo said, “Put a pile of horse poop in the living room.” I don’t know why, but that just made Ben laugh. He laughed and he laughed, and pretty soon he had walked right up to the school, and he was a little less scared. But by the time he found his classroom, sat by himself, and didn’t know any other kids to talk to, he was feeling pretty lonely again. Then, when the morning recess came, and he had to stand by himself on the playground, he felt even worse. But finally, he saw another kid who was also left out of the group, and Ben got up his courage, walked over, and told him the joke. Having just one kid to laugh with made him feel way, way better.

Tuesday morning, when Ben got ready for school, he was still a little sad – but not nearly as sad as he had been the day before. But then a very odd thing happened: When he put the giant red yoyo in his pack, it seemed a little smaller. But on the way to school, it was just as cheerful – singing a little song, and telling him more jokes. The one he liked best was, “What’s the difference between an elephant and a flea?” When he said, “Tell me,” the yoyo said, “An elephant can have fleas, but a flea can’t have elephants,” again, Ben thought that was just about the funniest joke he’d ever heard, and he felt better all the way to school.

At recess that day, when Ben found his new friend, he told him the joke. The two boys laughed so hard that a couple of other kids came over and asked to hear it.

On Wednesday morning, pretty much the same thing happened, except the yoyo was now only three times as big as a regular yoyo. But again, the yoyo had a pretty good joke: “Why did the chicken cross the road, roll in the mud, and then cross back again?” When Ben said he didn’t know, the yoyo chuckled as it said, “Because he was a dirty double-crosser, of course!” That day when Ben told the joke at school, about six kids came over to hear it. Ben was beginning to have some friends.

By Friday morning, the yoyo was hardly bigger than a regular yoyo. On the way to school, Ben thought he heard it begin to sing a little song – but just then, two kids he knew came out of a white house, and another ran around the corner, and they all shouted, “Hello!”

At recess that day, Ben didn’t know any new jokes. But it didn’t matter, because all of his new friends took turns playing with the yoyo, which now looked like any other yoyo.

Rich: Jake, it feels like your story incorporates a little bit of your own life.

Jake: Yes, it does; I mean, some of the things that happened to Ben in his childhood happened to me: I did move to a new house, I got a new mom, and I went to a new school on the same day. I didn’t have a red yoyo, but for some reason that yoyo triggered the thoughts about my own childhood, and I just let it go, and that’s, I think, part of the creativity of making stories – you often don’t know where they’re going to come out, and you’ve got to be open to the fact that maybe it’s going to take you inside yourself a little bit, some places that might even be a little uncomfortable.

For more storytelling tips, check out TallTalesAudio.com, where you can also purchase CDs and downloadable tales from our collection of original children’s’ stories.

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