I take a lot of longish (2 hours or more) drives with my kids. Mostly to visit family—sometimes just to run errands, because I live in Vermont and we're an hour from everything. (I like to grumble about that a lot.) My kids are pretty good in the car, but Noah gets car sick if he tries to read, draw or anything that involves using his eyes and looking down. So last year I discovered that our local library's children's department has a pretty fantastic selection of audio books. I thought we'd give it a try and we listened to the first in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events on the 3 hour drive to my sister's.
We were hooked. I thought maybe the kids would still get bored and restless at some point but they sat riveted listening for the entire ride. (OK, M fell asleep.) N asked tons of questions, so there was a lot of pausing, but at least I knew he was paying attention. There was something luxurious about it for me--I almost never get to just sit and get totally absorbed in a book the way I used to. Even through we were listening to a children's book, it was quite relaxing to be read to.
We listened to every Lemony Snicket the library had on CD, and then we moved on to the Harry Potter series, which we were reading to N at the time. Now you know how we got through reading the entire series aloud in about 6 months! Jim Dale narrates the entire series and he is amazing. That's something important that I've learned about audio books: the narrator is really key. There is a difference between simply reading a book aloud and actually performing it. Jim Dale does the latter--he adopts voices for each character, and delivers the dialogue as well as the narration brilliantly. Every Harry Potter fan should listen to these. (He also narrates the Peter and the Starcatchers series—look for a post soon on this great series.)
Now, we don't take a car ride longer than 30 minutes without a great audio book to sink our teeth--or ears--into. In fact, when we drove to Boston a few weeks ago, we forgot to check out a new one from the library and made an emergency stop at a Barnes & Noble off the highway to buy the only children's audio book in the entire store: A Wrinkle in Time, read the the author, Madeleine L'engle. A beloved fantasy classic narrated the by the legendary author herself? Yes, please! What truer way to hear a story than the way the author herself hears it? It was a really fun way to dip our feet into that series, and we're looking forward to reading (or hearing) more.
The next audio book I picked up was Wind in the Willows, narrated by Ralph Cosham. This is one of many beloved books from my childhood that I've been dying to read with Noah, but he's just never been interested. However, he was perfectly happy to listen to it in the car, and kept asking for more even when I thought he might be bored with the rather tame story. And that is one of my favorite things about our audio book habit: I can pick just about anything--any old book I've been wanting to share with them--and they'll ride and listen and almost always enjoy it. Another one I "snuck in" on audio is Kate Dicamillo's Tale of Despereux--a book I suggest to Noah every time I see in the library and which he always summarily refuses to read, I think out of sheer orneryness. This one is read by narrator Graeme Malcolm, another fabulous narrator. (Hm, perhaps an English access is required for audio books to be worth listening to.)
I've enjoyed our audio literary adventures in the car so much that I've started to browse the audio books for adults in our local library. As with children's books, the right book with the right narrator is key to holding my interest. Not all books work as well on audio--for instance, Isabel Allende's Island Beneath the Sea was less than engaging to listen to, although she's one of my favorite authors—I think because it's in the third person and there is no, or very little, dialogue. On the other hand, Little Bee by Chris Cleve, which I read last year and loved, was wonderful. This novel alternates first-person narrators and the performer takes on each voice in a wonderful way. Right now I'm listening to Alice Walker's The Color Purple, which I read many years ago, and is read--yes--by the author! Again, this really makes it special and adds a whole new layer to the book for me. I think I'm going to seek out some of those "always meant to read" classics to listen to next.
Bottom line: If you haven't ever tried listening to audio books with your kids, you should. And try for yourself, too. After all, who doesn't enjoy being read to?
