Audio Books +

These audio books for children and teens offer more than just a narration of the book.  Enhanced content, music, and  vivid voice characterization make for a memorable listening experience.  Several have been nominated for Audie Awards by Audio Publishers Association.  Check their site May 28th to see a full list of nominees and winners.

  Follow Follow by Marilyn Singer/ill. Josée Masse, read by Singer and Joe Morton

A compilation of reverso poems featuring characters from the fairy tale kindom.  Clever verses are read once, then repeated in reverse order, often by an opposing character.  What do the Hare and the Tortoise think of their chances in the race?  Aladdin and his genie both wish for freedom from their masters.  King Midas’s view of himself is “mirrored” by a child onloooker.  A highly successful example of pairing a book with a read-along CD, as the printed poems let us  see just where the re”vers”als occur.  Josée Masse’s illustrations of bold brightly colored characters energentically illustrate the dual verses.

  Rabbit Ears Storybook Classics are short tales read by noted actors and enhanced with original background music and musical characterization, also composed by famous musicians.  Story segments are typically 20+ minutes each. Hear  Robin Williams as Pecos Bill, Cher as the Ugly Duckling,  Jack Nicholson reading Rudyard Kipling’s Just So stories.  The wide selection includes fairy tales, folk tales from around the world, American tall tales, and Bible stories.

  Crossover by Kwame Alexander, narrated by Corey Allen.  The Newbery Medal  and Coretta Scott King Award winner from 2015, this novel in verse describes twin hot shot basketball brothers.  Their dad was a former pro player, their mom is assistant principal at school – no pressure there!  Told in alternating voices, Alexander captures the exhilaration and feeling of playing basketball and the brothers’ bewilderment at the changes they experience in adolescence.  Sibling rivalry, concern over their father’s health, all come pouring out in fluid phrases as sweet as their moves on the court.  The book translates great as an audio production, with the poetic form still in evidence.  As we hear from the book’s primary voice, Dirty McNasty, Muhammed Ali isn’t the only sports figure who can spout poetry.

  The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, performed by a full cast including the author (as the Poet Nehemiah Trot) and Derek Jacobi. This new recording of the multiple award winning fantasy has been nominated as Audio Book of the Year 2015 by the Audio Publishers Association.  (The originial recorded version, narrated soley by Gaiman, also won an Audie.)  The evil spirit, Sleer is truly creepily voiced, reminiscent of Harry Potter’s Dementors.  Appropriately, each chapter begins with music adapted from Le Danse Macabre.  As the primary narrator, Jacobi imbues his narration with an ominous tone.

  How to Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks, narrated by Mandy Williams.  Nominated for an Audie award as best children’s book, ages 8-12.  In a magical Victorian England, we  follow the adventures of Birdie, an orphan who works for Alfred the Bogle Catcher.  She acts as the bait to entice the wispy, sooty, creatures out of the chimney or other hiding places.  While the text might be difficult to read as written phonetically, narrator Williams lucidly displays a variety of British accents in portraying the young, poor, rich of London, even prettily singing the songs Birdie sings to trap the bogles.

  Countdown & Revolution   Books 1 & 2 of the Sixties Trilogy by Deborah Wiles.  Wiles and her narrators bring the 1960s, with all its turmoil, to life in books focusing on  the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi. The threat of nuclear war looms just beyond the horizon. The print versions are interspersed with photos, print ads, speech transcripts by famous figures from the time.  While we miss the photos in the audio version, the text is transcribed as actual news reports, TV and radio ads, and passable imitations of JFK, Khrushchev, LBJ and Martin Luther King.  Tying this social history together is the story of a child living through these time.  Read or listen to these books with your child or grandchild.  Wiles has done an incredibly thorough job recreating a decade that still reverberates.

  Blue Lily Lily Blue (Raven Boys Cycle, #3) by Maggie Stiefvater, narrated by Will Patton.  Teen and adult fans who have been listening to the Raven Boys Cycle are in for a treat at the end of this installment.   Original music has been written and recorded for the verse at the beginning of the book: Queens and kings, Kings and queens … .  It plays at the end of the story.