Recent audiobooks

Since I’m immersed in a novel that will take me at least another week to finish, I thought I’d share some of the audiobooks that have filled the airwaves in our house lately in addition to the read-alouds. The girls enjoy listening to stories while playing with legos or fashioning habitats for tiny animal figurines, and lately they’ve heard…

School Days According to Humphrey (Betty Birney): The latest installment in the Humphrey the hamster series, this one covers Humphrey’s experience of a whole new group of students entering Room 23 in the fall. Read to perfection by William Dufris, this story has all the trademark features of previous Humphrey stories we’ve read. We often find ways to quote our favorite lines and to imitate Humphrey’s enthusiastic voice and speech patterns.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll): “It’s just so dreamlike and funny,” says Older Daughter. “Yeah,” agrees Younger Daughter, “growing and shrinking and growing again, meeting strange characters, you know — all of it.” This unabridged version is read by Jim Dale, who also reads James Herriot’s Treasury for Children. I enjoy the audiobook more than I enjoyed reading the original… oh for such a reading voice.

Sherlock Holmes for Children (abridged, read by Jim Weiss): My youngest is absolutely hilarious when she quotes long passages from this one by memory. We won this when Mouseprints had a giveaway, and it’s has been thoroughly worked into our imaginations through multiple listenings. Weiss contrasts the bumbling Watson and the suave Holmes beautifully.

Black Beauty (Anna Sewell): I do NOT enjoy this one, but oh how often I hear this sad tale of animal abuse with one of the best happy endings in literature. The girls know that if I’m around they have to skip over some of the worst scenes, beginning with the hunt just a few pages in.

Beric the Briton (G.A. Henty, abridged, read by Jim Weiss): I wrote about this one back here. Good stuff.

The Velveteen Rabbit (read by Meryl Streep): This is one I bought on tape when I had my first puppy after graduating from college. She would yip and cry at night, alone in the kitchen, till I came down and put a hand on her head and put in this tape. George Winston plays piano in the background. We’ve graduated to the CD set, and I consider this the definitive reading of this wonderful tale.

Those are the ones we’ve been hearing lately. We have others, and borrow others from the library. I don’t allow them as continual background noise, but when the girls are doing something that enables them to concentrate, they seem to be able to listen with attention. I always think of the scene from the movie Amadeus, when Mozart is composing a symphony with one hand and rolling a billiard ball with the other, always in the same pattern. It’s as if the concentration of the creative side of his brain is enhanced by keeping the hands busy. The girls too seem able to maintain busy hands and busy brains. And it saves me from the burden of rereading — which I value highly, but dislike doing aloud.

So there you have it. Back now to Kazuo Ishiguro’s dreamlike world in The Unconsoled. How will he pull it all together? It’s going to take some patience to find out…