Syracuse entrepreneur launches new kids’ Storytime YouTube reading series in sync with National Reading Month
Syracuse, NY (March 23, 2023) – Joshua Olatunde, a Syracuse daycare center owner and high-level delivery service CEO is releasing a fun new series of YouTube videos for young children to inspire a passion for reading. The video series, Story Time with Mr. Josh, Mr. Josh’s Kool School is created for children from 0-6 years old.
Since January, a new video has been released every Saturday morning at 10AM (EST) on Mr. Josh’s Kool School YouTube Channel and will continue until all 52 episodes are uploaded. In these 5–7-minute episodes, Olatunde, starts off with a humorous flashback of when he was a child and transitions to him providing an intriguing and captivating reading of a story. Books he features include the “Llama Llama” series and even “I Promise”, by Lebron James. As he reads the short story aloud, the text appears across the screen, so that children can read along with him. In addition to the text, some illustrations from the original story appear on the screen. At the very end of the videos, Josh concludes by explaining the benefits of reading and encouraging his viewers to pick up a book and give it a try.
“I have a passion for enriching young minds and was inspired to create the reading series based on my fond memories of watching the 1980’s hit children’s television show, Reading Rainbow,” said Olatunde. “My goal is to ignite a love of stories amongst young children who are just beginning to pick up books and speak to them at a level they can comprehend.”
The reading series is his second round of releasing kids’ educational programming. He created the YouTube, Mr. Josh’s Kool School in 2020 as a multi-subject educational miniseries that merges standards-based content with various genres of dance and music. In the earlier videos, he focused on STEM-related topics. Some of the earlier videos feature nationally recognized child actors Brianni Walker from Disney’s “Magic Camp” and the hit series “Dhar Mann: and Ayush Rajimachikar from Netflix’s Michelle Obama inspired series, “Waffles + Mochi”. The channel was created to support individualized learning across all disciplines. The new series on his channel solely focuses on reading. All the videos shared on Olatunde’s channel are art-driven, short-form content to help young students excel in the classroom.
Children aren’t Olatunde’s only audience. His show is beginning to catch the attention of children’s book authors, who are now requesting that he read their books.
“I was hoping this series would take off, but I think I was really surprised at how many authors have approached me about including their books on my show.”
From the very beginning, Josh has prioritized high academic achievement. He was raised in Chicago by his mother who worked as a real estate agent, and his father who served in the US Navy. Josh was an honor student all throughout his academic career. He attended Hunter College in New York where he earned a dual major and interned for JP Morgan Chase & Lehman Brothers. During the summer Josh volunteered at a summer camp STEM Program Assistant at Pathways for Youth in the South Bronx. This was when Josh discovered his love for working with the youth and helping them to develop both personally and academically.
After college, Josh worked with Harvard University as a high school teacher in Ongwediva, Namibia where he taught Physics to high school students in rural villages.
