Going on a road trip this summer? I have a recommendation. Besides researching the best route or the best campground or the best hotel, research an audiotape that fits the needs of your family.
A well-read audiobook can be an absorbing experience, uplifting to the mind. When we first moved to Maine, I had never heard of Donn Fendler’s harrowing account of his nine-day brush with death, told in the book Lost on a Mountain in Maine. I listened to the audio version and was lost in the story, nearly driving straight through a toll booth without stopping.
My go-to expert on the important matter of reading aloud to children is Meghan Cox Gurdon. Her must-read book for parents, The Enchanted Hour: The Miraculous Power of Reading Aloud in the Age of Distraction tells of the impact of audiobooks.
On long journeys, my children and I would listen to Peter Dennis reading A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh and Martin Jarvis reading Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. So loyal were my children to the recordings that when I brought out the books, they insisted that I read in the exact cadences of Peter Dennis and Martin Jarvis.
My daughter used to listen to Meryl Streep read The Velveteen Rabbit. One day I listened in as she read the book aloud in a perfect British accent.
Gurdon writes, A superb audio recording is a work of art, a creation not so different in certain respects from a marble bust or a portrait in oils. She considers audiobooks as a first choice for a road trip, but “must take a narrow second place to live readers.”
Audiobooks are not just for children, of course. One long, cold winter my husband and I listened to The Fellowship of the Ring, read masterfully by Rob Inglis. A long road trip from Alabama to Louisiana was enriched as we listened to Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough read The Wright Brothers.
Father Paul urged me to mention my own books in these articles. Perilous Days is the story of a boy and his dog thrust into Hitler’s army. Martyrs: The Story of Father Sebastian Rale is the dramatic story of a Jesuit missionary who lived with the Abenaki people in Madison, Maine. He was murdered by British soldiers in 1724. Both are available on audible books.