Audiobooks

For the last year or so, the kids (esp Jack) have been very into audiobooks. We started with 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' read by Erik Idle. He's a great narrator and the story is so rich and enjoyable in the way of all great children's literature. After listening to that at least 10 times, I needed a change so we moved onto all of the Ramona Quimby books. Stockard Channing narrates those and she is also amazing. There are 6 books in that series and after listening to all of those at least 10 times, I had to move on. We listen mostly in the car but sometimes at home and I am always listening too because the stereo is in our living space.

I tried a lot of different audiobooks but the bar is very high for what interests Jack. We tried the Henry Huggins series (we did not make it through one book), the Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss stories (we made it through a couple of those),  and Tales of the Fourth Grade Nothing (10 minutes).

We started The Boxcar Children. He was interested but when he learned I'd procured the Harry Potter series, he wanted nothing else. Ryan has been reading the series to him. He has now heard each of the first three books several times. The audiobooks are narrated by Stephen Fry who is as good as Erik Idle or Stockard Channing.

Jack listens to audiobooks with the same rapt attention that he stares at a monitor. If you talk to him, he won't hear you. He also really listens because we talk a lot about the characters in the books. Do we think they are good or bad, nice or mean, etc? He learned a lot about manners from the Ramona books, and he learned about sarcasm from Willy Wonka (although he doesn't know what sarcasm means he understands when Wonka uses it).  I think he liked the Boxcar children because there are no adults around and the kids have adventures independently. Harry Potter's allure is obvious.

It's lots of fun. My challenge is finding really, really good children's books.