Regular readers might remember my Lunii my fabulous storyteller review earlier in the year. Well they’ve invited us to review one of their new albums so I thought I’d update you on how we are getting on with the device several months on. In case you’ve not heard of it before Lunii is a screen-free storytelling device for children aged three and over. My daughters are six and just three so the perfect ages for this. We love reading and they enjoy bedtime stories with us every night. Reading stories with children is so important and I strongly believe it is one of the most important things you can do to support your child’s learning. Whilst Lunii won’t be replacing this important part of our family routine, I love that it is another way for my children to experience stories.
Disclosure – We were gifted a Lunii My Fabulous Storyteller purpose of this review and compensated for our time. All words, photos and opinions are my own. This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase through these links I may make a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay.
Lunii my fabulous storyteller
As soon as I got Lunii out of the box my girls were interested to know what it was. I think this is partly to do with how brightly coloured the device is. It’s really simply designed and very eye-catching. The box contains Lunii, a USB cable and a small instruction book. The instruction booklet is short for a very good reason, Lunii is very simple to use and my 6 year old very quickly got the hang of using it. The dial on the side of the device switches Lunii on and off as well as controlling the volume. The top of the device is the speaker and there is also a socket for adding headphones if you prefer.
On the front of the device is a large yellow dial which you use to choose the different options in the story. There are also 3 small buttons. Home (to start a new story), pause and ok (which you press after selecting an option).
As soon as Lunii is switched on it speaks (in a female English voice) and asks you who will be the hero of the story (there is the choice of boy or girl) followed by where the story is set (home, sea, forest or castle), who the hero will meet (lots of different option) and an object. As well as speaking the options a simple LED picture of each option shows up on Lunii.
Lunii comes with a starter pack preloaded onto the device which features 48 different stories. You can buy additional packs from the Lunii store (see below for more details) to extend the options for stories. Lunii charges up via the USB cable and a single charge lasts for 10 hours of listening.
Luniistore
Once your children get tired of the preloaded stories then you can head to the Luniistore to download some new stories. I love this. My girls still enjoy the current set but it’s always nice to add a few extras and when the day comes where they lose interest I know where to head to get some more.
To add new stories to Lunii is easy, just as you’d expect. Simply download the Luniistore app to your computer. Then you can browse the catalogue and choose the stories your kids will like. The app is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.
Once in the app you can sort the available albums by age (3 and over, 5 and over, 7 and over), by album type (music, stories where the child becomes part of the story and the classic choose your own stories that Lunii is known for), theme and by foreign language. Albums last from 15 minutes to 3 hours and contain between 6 and 48 stories per album).
Prices vary depending on the number of stories in the album. There are even a few free albums available. There are so many great albums available. The Mr men and little miss ones are bound to be a hit with little ones. I also like the idea of the meditations for children and portraits of rebel girls.
It’s very straightforward to purchase and then download your albums. Once they are in your app library then you can transfer them to your Lunii device using the USB charging lead.
The Wanderly Tales
The Wanderly tale is their first-ever original album for the UK. These stories haven’t been translated from other languages and are written by local writers. The recommended age is 5 years plus and there are 18 stories, adding up to 2 hours and 8 minutes of storytime.
We love these stories and how they are based on British folklore. They feature the Loch ness monster, king Arthur’s round table and Merlin. How great is that? My 6 year old particularly enjoys these stories, especially the ones involving Tamsin. We love the background music which really adds to the stories and that the accents are British.
Our verdict
My girls love Lunii and have used it a lot over the last 6 months. It’s great for car journeys and it is great for camping trips too. It really holds their attention and they enjoy being in control of choosing all the elements of the story. I can see why they enjoy it. I used to love the choose your own adventure books as a child and this is like a modern equivalent. Lunii can be purchased directly from Lunii or from* Amazon.
If you want to look for more ideas, then find the Best children’s audio players here.
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This looks lovely – it is so nice not to have a distracting screen. It reminds me of my first walkman that I had for listening to audio books – and strangely a Rick Astley album!
Are the stories read in an English or American accent?
We love our screens but we also love Lunii. It has an English accent.
Oh this looks wonderful! My 3 year old would really enjoy this. I remember choose your own adventure books, they were the best!
Me too! I think that might be one of the reasons I love this device.
I think it’s really important for children to hear stories told in different voices so this sounds great.
That’s a good point I’d not considered.
What a lovely idea, so much nicer than an iPad or similar! And as you say, perfect for car journeys and camping.
We think so too.
I love this idea! Especially that it doesn’t have a screen and has so many stories available!
My girls haven’t got bored with the ones it comes with yet but there are so many more available on their site too.
This sounds like such a fun toy! Perfect for rainy days or long drives
We love it
I’ve never heard of this but it looks like a really interesting little gadget.
We love it
I have never heard of this but I already love it. I can see how it would be fantastic for car journeys. Thanks for sharing. Xx
I wasn’t aware of it before they contacted me either. Great idea though.
Oh this is cool – wouldn’t it be ace if you could change the accent to a regional accent ?! Was listening to something on Radio 4 last night about accents sorry 😆 – but what a fab concept this is! So clever 🙂
I’ve not heard of this before. Such a good idea. My daughters are the same age as yours so I’m sure they’d like it too