Read, Kids, Read!

You are here: Home / Archives for Audiobooks

Audiobooks

If you have just one take-away from my blog, I hope it will be a resolve to make great audiobooks a part of your toolkit to get your kid reading. The best audiobooks can inspire a love of words and stories, and sometimes even a curiosity about what these words and stories look like on the page. They can turn hours of often-wasted transit time into an absorbing literary experience, one that the whole family can enjoy together.

With the recent boom in the number of audiobooks and in ways of accessing them, these resources can be both overwhelming and under-used. What to listen to, how to listen, using what devices, websites and tools...? I sift through all of it, together with my kids as often as possible, to bring the best of the best to more kids. Check back here often to find out the best and latest...

Audiobook review: Big Hero 6

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: Big Hero 6 Junior Novelization (Disney’s Big Hero 6)
Author: Irene Trimble
Narrator: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 2h 18m
Format: Audiobook
Age group: 8+

Fourteen-year old Hiro Hamada is brilliant but wastes all his time hustling at ‘bot fights in dark alleys instead of focusing on his future. He worships Tadashi, his older brother, who rescues him from scrapes and encourages him to think bigger. Everything changes when Hiro loses his big brother in a terrible accident at a famous robotics lab where Tadashi was developing a health-care robot named Baymax. Heartbroken, Hiro teams up with Baymax and with 5 of Tadashi’s friends when he realizes that the explosion at the lab may not have been an accident at all.

You may be surprised to hear about Big Hero 6, the audiobook! The movie was of course a huge hit and no doubt your kids, like mine, saw it when it was released. But the audiobook is really well written and read with a beautifully resonant voice by MacLeod Andrews.  Read more…Audiobook review: Big Hero 6

Headed toward family, hearth and home

Posted on Leave a Comment

It’s Thanksgiving here in the U.S., and with that comes the onset of the holiday season. Maybe you’re driving to your parents’ right now for a Thanksgiving feast… maybe you will only be heading home in a few weeks for Christmas, Hannukah or the New Year. Perhaps you will travel by air or by sea, by road or by rail, or perhaps only by way of your dreams.

No matter what the mode, know that the journey home is a universal experience. It remains a powerful and persistent motif in all of literature, with children’s literature being no exception. Read more…Headed toward family, hearth and home

Audiobook review: The Star of Kazan

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: The Star of Kazan
Author: Eva Ibbotson
Narrator: Patricia Connolly
Length: 10h 15m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+

When Sigrid and Ellie, maids for a family of Austrian musicians, find a baby abandoned at a small church among the Alps, they are utterly bewildered. They bring the foundling home to Vienna and eventually raise her as their own. All is well until Annika, now a young girl, unexpectedly inherits a box of costume jewelry, and a mysterious German aristocrat emerges claiming to be Annika’s long-lost mother.  Read more…Audiobook review: The Star of Kazan

Audiobook review: The Adventures of Ulysses

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: The Adventures of Ulysses
Author: Bernard Evslin
Narrator: Todd Haberkorn
Length: 4h 30m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+

The Adventures of Ulysses, by Bernard Evslin, is a vivid retelling of The Odyssey for tweens and teens. Odysseus’ desperate, decade-long quest to return home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, makes for a tale that is chock-full of adventure on the high seas.  Read more…Audiobook review: The Adventures of Ulysses

Audiobook review: Matilda

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: Matilda
Author: Roald Dahl
Narrator: Kate Winslet
Length: 4h 30m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 9+

If you aren’t enamored of Kate Winslet already, you are bound to be after listening to her reading of Roald Dahl’s Matilda. We were captivated by her telling of this dark but fascinating tale, in which – as many of you know – little Matilda Wormwood uses her genius and talents to escape mistreatment at the hands of many adults including a headmistress and her own parents. Winslet animates all from the shyest tyke to the stentorian Trunchbull with a superb range of voices and accents.  Read more…Audiobook review: Matilda

Audiobook review: Heart of a Samurai

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: Heart of a Samurai
Author: Margi Preus
Narrator: James Yaegashi
Length: 6h 15m
Format: Full length story
Age group: 10+

When 14-year old Manjiro, the son of a poor Japanese fisherman, finds himself shipwrecked on a deserted island with a rag-tag bunch of mates, he fears the worst. But rescue arrives in the form of an American whaling ship, and soon Manjiro finds himself amidst an international, possibly barbaric crew, sailing towards America. Curious, brave, adventurous, and aspiring above his lowly station to live by Samurai principles, Manjiro embraces this chance to learn about the wider world. Read more…Audiobook review: Heart of a Samurai

Ghouls, ghosts, and some audiobook greats

Posted on Leave a Comment

Here in New England, the signs are all around. Leaves are floating down and starting to rustle across the streets.  Storefronts are starting to fill up with seriously spooky stuff. It all means just one thing to kids – Halloween is around the corner.

So what’s on your playlist this October? Do you have a sufficiently spooky audiobook going, to set the tone for the season? To get you started, here are a few Read, Kids, Read! recommendations for the older set. Read more…Ghouls, ghosts, and some audiobook greats

Audiobook review: The Graveyard Book

Posted on Leave a Comment

Title: The Graveyard Book
Author: Neil Gaiman
Narrator: Full cast recording (Derek Jacobi, Neil Gaiman, Julian Rhind-Tutt et al)
Length: 7h 47m
Format: Full length story
Age Group: 10+

This is a superb, full-cast reading that brings to life a luminous book by Neil Gaiman. It is not for the faint-of-heart though. The book starts with a murder. While the murder scene is swift and more implied than described, it is quite scary. The lone survivor, a toddler, wanders into a nearby graveyard, where he is adopted by its otherworldly inhabitants and given the name Nobody Owens, or Bod for short. And from there the tale turns into a spooky, but absolutely enthralling, coming-of-age tale. Read more…Audiobook review: The Graveyard Book