Our Family's Favorite Audiobooks

Our family listens to a lot of audiobooks for 2 main reasons: 1. My littles love them and 2. They learn so much.

I couldn’t even begin to count the times my littles have quoted a line, asked a question, or made a connection based on a story they’ve heard. We borrow from the library or buy favorites. When we buy, we usually get the CDs, burn them to our computer, and download them to our iPods. This grants us lots of flexibility. We can listen to the CDs in the car and on our iPods around our home or anywhere, alone or together.

Here are 6 of our family’s favorite audiobooks:

1. Chronicles of Narnia. This is truly awesome. Different than a typical audiobook, it is audio theatre. Think voice actors, sound effects, and music. Two enthusiastic thumbs up from each member of our family.

2. Story of the World. I list this as one, but really it’s 4 volumes making up over 40 hours of stories. You cannot do better than this for learning history at a young age. Heck, at any age! My husband and I have learned so much.

3. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. Such a rich story and it’s not just the chocolate. Somebody please tell me if any of the movies made live up to the greatness of this book. I’m guessing no, since they basically never ever do.

4. Sherlock Holmes for Children by Jim Weiss. I’m mentioning Sherlock Holmes in particular, because it’s one of my children’s favorite Jim Weiss recordings. But we have listened to ten so far and they’re all great. I’m ready to add to our collection soon with these titles: King Arthur and His Knights, Galileo and the Stargazers, and The Queen’s Pirate.

5. Jonathan Park. Again, not just one, but many volumes —  (I believe) 9 to be exact. Since we’re just talking parent to parent here, I’ll tell you these are a bit dated and hokey. But don’t tell my littles – they have no idea! Perhaps it’s because they don’t recognize the “beep boop bope” sound effects as the internet dial-up, but I do. Having said that, these are still worth listening to, because they encourage so much critical thinking and offer so much scientific information. I just discovered they have special editions for zoo, aquarium, and Amazon animals that we might need to add to our collection soon.

6. Pippi Longstocking. She’s silly in a way that has never been repeated. Do your family a favor and laugh through this one together. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this character is just for girls.

 

I can already tell you our next favorite – Pilgrim’s Progress.  About two years ago, we read this children’s version. (It retained the great story plus had 50 captivating, watercolor illustrations. It’s definitely a good starting place for this classic book.) Over this past school year we’ve been reading the original. My littles have been enjoying it with me and surprisingly following along very well. But it i’s slow going. Now with our summer schedule, we’re reading it less and less frequently. I’m hoping an audio book will help us finish strong. I just love this book and I can’t imagine the audio book will turn out wrong.

 

Okay, I told you mine, now you tell me yours! Since we’re planning our next great adventure for our goal of 50 States Before They Graduate, we’re going to need some great audio books to fill the long hours in the car.