About Audiobooks

 

I've utterly failed in my ambition to read to my kids every night. 

Oh, we'll manage to read a picture book every once in awhile, and every now and again I'll feel ambitious and attempt to start a chapter book. But it's all very inconsistent and at this point it's been a couple weeks since I read at bedtime. I'm hoping to get better at it. 

Meanwhile, in the gap between what I wish I was doing and what I'm actually doing, we're listening to audiobooks from the public library whenever we go somewhere in the van. I usually opt for a series over a standalone book-- if my kids like a given series, it's easier on my sanity to have very similar stories played for weeks on end than a single story played for weeks on end. 

It's not a perfect stand in. There's a lot of times that Little Boy gets to hear the start of one chapter while we wait in line at the school drop off, then the end of an entirely different chapter when we pick him up that afternoon because I've been out running errands with the girls. This bothers me a little, but I'm a firm believer in the idea that it's better to do something imperfectly than not at all. 

Some series have better narrators than others. While the quality of the story remains important,  who they actually get to read it is what ultimately makes or breaks the book. It could be one of the best stories in the world, but if the reader has a boring monotone it's nearly an unbearable experience. 

Here's some of what's been playing lately. I found all these at my public library, but I've included links just in case. 

Hank the Cowdog. Series written and read by John R Erickson. 

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned these before, but I'm going to mention them again. Accounts of Texas panhandle cowboy culture as explained by a dog who's not as smart as he thinks he is. This guy is funny, and a master of writing and voicing ridiculous conversations. The songs honestly aren't too bad either. 

Ramona the Pest and the other Ramona books. Series written by Beverly Cleary, read by Stockard Channing 

Beverly Cleary gets kids. She really does. Her books do a fantastic job illustrating what's going on inside a character's head, and they feel true. She writes simple stories about things most families go through- dealing with siblings, having a parent lose a job, moving into a new room. But she really explores what those experiences are like from a child's perspective and manages a deep dive into them that feels authentic and interesting. 

 Stockard manages to sound convincingly like a grown woman and like a six year old girl in a way that sounds accurate yet isn't completely obnoxious. Neil Patrick Harris also reads one or two of Cleary's books, and those recordings are worth listening to as well. He also does a surprisingly good impression of the speech patterns and attitude of a small stubborn girl...go figure. 

Mrs. Piggle Wiggle Series written by Betty MacDonald, Read by Karen White. 

A series of short stories collected into several books about children in a neighborhood struggling with several different annoying habits, and the odd little woman who has cures for those habits-- sometimes magical, sometimes practical. Always entertaining. 

The author of these books passed away in 1958. The children in them do the same annoying things my children do, and it's actually pretty reassuring to see depictions of 1950s housewives at their wit's end over the same things that drive me crazy. I also enjoy how much the author unabashedly pokes fun at 1950s suburbia. It's genuinely fascinating to me to catch a glimpse of the women's clubs, pastimes, and attitudes of that era, even as they're being relentlessly trolled. 

Karen White is a good narrator who captures the characters well. I'm not sure what else I can say about her beyond that, but that's really all she needs to be.  

The Magic Treehouse series written and read by Mary Pope Osborne. 

A brother and sister find a magical treehouse in the woods it takes them everywhere from the Jurassic, to 1920s New Orleans, to Camelot. 

I'm not a big fan of these, but my kids really enjoy them and they are technically "educational." It's very simple historical fiction/fantasy written for a lower elementary grade level. There's nothing wrong with them per sey, it's just that they're very formulaic, very simply written, and read in a voice that sounds like a syrupy sweet kindergarten teacher reading very slowly and clearly. There's also a TON of them, which is good in that there's always something there to grab and bad in that, well, there's always something there to grab. 

Anyway, that's what the soundtrack to our lives on the road has been lately. If you know of any other good audiobooks I should try, let me know in the comments.