Neil Gaiman on Audiobooks

Award-winning author and audiobook narrator Neil Gaiman has long been a champion of the audiobook format. In a recent piece for All Things Considered on NPR News, Neil discusses the audiobook. He plays an excerpt from the earliest audiobook he knows of—Walt Whitman reading his poem America, which you may recognize from a current Levi’s commercial.

An audiobook lover as a child, he rediscovered audiobooks as a parent to supplement his own reading aloud. He was excited when he was allowed to record one of his own books on audio, but was warned it was a dying format because of the impending death of cassettes. Thankfully, that’s not the case!

Read (or listen to!) the interview to learn Gaiman’s thoughts on audio. Also hear him interview author David Sedaris and actor Martin Jarvis on audiobooks, and hear one audiobook director’s woes about “stomach noises” during narration. Be sure to listen to Martin Jarvis’s amusing story about the first audiobook he was hired to record, plus learn how he uses the author’s words to create character’s voices.

Join in the discussion or share your thoughts here on the oft-heard discussion point about audiobooks. Are they the same as books? Critic Harold Bloom writes them off. One commenter points out that a play—whether in print, performed live, or viewed on video—is still a play, so an audiobook is no different. What do you think?

Inside the Audiobook Studio with the Modern Scholar

Recently our Modern Scholar editor Ed White was interviewed by Mary Burkey of Booklist’s Audiobooker blog. Check out the article here and learn what’s on Ed’s MP3 player, how the Modern Scholar series is created, why a Modern Scholar recording once included a song about a house fly, and what’s coming next from Modern Scholar.

Don’t forget, you can also become a fan of Recorded Books and The Modern Scholar on facebook.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We here at Recorded Books are thankful for all of our wonderful customers, and to say thanks we’re offering a free audio excerpt from The Adventurous Life of Myles Standish and accompanying lesson plans. Click here for information on how to download the audio and lesson plans.

Two other excellent suggestions for Thanksgiving reading are The Thanksgiving Beast Feast by Karen Gray Ruelle or Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen.

Congratulations to our ePrep Winner!

Congratulations to the winner of our giveaway of 25 seats in ePrep, an online SAT/ACT test prep program…

Betty said:

I teach English to 11th & 12th graders in a small, rural school district. We have offered SAT prep classes in the past, but because of the limited number of students (and teachers) we can not longer offer the test preparation in their daily schedules. Our past efforts have not fostered successful outcomes. The opportunity for the students to use this software individually would greatly increase their scores, I am sure. The immediate feedback and great explanation works to identify and support needed skills. Our low income students would have access to a program that they may be unable to afford, and successful SAT scores would open a world of opportunity to many of our students.

We’re glad to be able to offer ePrep to your school, Betty, and will be excited to see how the program works for your students.

There were so many good entries—we wish we could pick more than one! We love your ideas for using ePrep in the media center and see that the media center is often becoming the center for SAT and ACT test prep in schools. Many commenters pointed out that tool such as ePrep is a great way to ease student fears and allow them to become familiar with the test’s question types and structure before the big day, especially for more challenged students.

Elizabeth Vigue says, “For many of my students, the SAT is not just a testing challenge; it also presents an economic and racial divide that they must conquer.” Laura Roose says, “This confidence booster is exactly what all students need before they take a huge decision maker for their life.”

Kathy Hossink also pointed out the innovative method ePrep uses to engage students, saying, “The program is great because it guides students along in a modern way. Most preparation for these tests tends to be study sessions with a guidebook. In the technological world that we live in today that form of preparation is outdated and probably won’t benefit most students. ePrep is interactive and allows students to prepare using methods that they are familiar and comfortable with.”

We encourage everyone to take the ePrep tour to see what the program is all about! Please don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions.

FREE Audio and Lesson Plans from Mailbox Magazine

We’re excited to be sponsoring the latest edition of The Mailbox e-newsletter. Featured in the newsletter are activities and free audiobook excerpt downloads for three books from Recorded Books-published Dr. Janet Allen’s Plugged-in to Nonfiction Grades 4-5, Horrible Science: Angry Animals, Abraham Lincoln: The Life of America’s Sixteenth President, and On the Halfpipe with…Tony Hawk.

Let us know if you use the audio and activities in your classroom or share your favorite activities using these titles. Don’t forget to sign up to receive future issues of the Mailbox e-newsletter—it’s a great resource for teacher freebies!

VIEW the newsletter to download excerpts and view lesson ideas!

Free Audio for Halloween!

Frankenstein is back, wishing you a Happy Halloween from Recorded Books! In case you missed it, AudioFile Magazine has a free download of several Edgar Allen Poe stories. You must download before October 31, 2009.

You can also check out the free audio downloads and lesson plans we offered last year for a few spooky stories: Dracula vs Grampa at the Monster Truck Spectacular, The Story of Ichabod Crane, and Frankenstein.

And don’t forget that there’s still time to enter our ePrep giveaway! Tell us (on that post, not this one!) why your school needs SAT/ACT prep and you can win 25 seats in this great new test prep and data analytics program.

Win SAT Prep for Your School!

Recorded Books is proud to announce a partnership with leading online SAT, ACT, and PSAT test-prep provider ePrep. Created by long-time private tutor and Princeton University graduate Karl Schellscheidt, ePrep combines video answer explanations with an interactive video-based study hall to help students maximize their scores. The school version of ePrep tracks student progress on an individual, classroom, grade, and school-wide basis. Study hall progress reports allow teachers and school administrators to identify areas of academic strength and weakness across all, or part, of the student population. Schools can direct students to use ePrep independently or make ePrep part of an official school program. Students can complete ePrep assignments from school, home, or the public library.

Take a tour of ePrep and check out some of the video examples. You’ll be left wishing ePrep had been available when you were a teenager!

To celebrate our partnership, we’re giving away 25 ePrep seats to one school! To win, leave a comment below telling us how you’d use ePrep in your school and why you deserve to win. We’ll pick our favorite commenter, and that person’s school will win 25 seats in the ePrep online program! Please be sure to leave your school name and location in the body of your comment and enter a valid email address when entering your comment. Comments will close on October 30, 2009 and a winner will be announced on November 9, 2009. Please click here to read the complete contest rules.

Happy Birthday, Beowulf!

This year the British Library is celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of Beowulf. If you happen to be in London on October 25-28, you can see their copy of Beowulf on display.

For those of us who can’t make it to London, listening to the audiobook version of the Seamus Heaney translation is another great way to celebrate this epic poem. The translation by the Nobel Prize-winning author was named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times and Library Journal. AudioFile Magazine awarded our audio recording, narrated by Golden Voice George Guidall, an AudioFile Earphones Award.

Pairing the print—especially the Heaney translation, which in most cases has a side-by side view of the modern translation and the Old English—with the audio will allow students to comprehend the famous work and hear the poetic elements without having to struggle through archaic text and notoriously difficult Old English names. Our Heaney translation also includes a wealth of information before and after the poem itself, including background information, author information, literary criticism, and a discussion of the art of translation.

Download an excerpt from the Beowulf audiobook below. (Right click and Save As to download.)

Beowulf Teacher Guide PDF

Beowulf Audiobook Excerpt – On translator Seamus Heaney, background on Beowulf, Beowulf summary

Beowulf Audiobook Excerpt – The Beginning

Celebrate Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week will be celebrated September 26–October 3, 2009. The ALA encourages librarians to “challenge censorship in the fulfillment of their responsibility to provide information and enlightenment” as stated in the Library Bill of Rights, and since 1990 the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom has compiled information on banned and challenged books.

If you’d like to share some of these banned and challenged books with your students, audiobooks are a great way to spark classroom discussion. Below (in nor particular order) is a partial list of some banned and challenged books (culled from ALA’s many lists) Recorded Books offers unabridged on audio. For the record, we have actually been asked in the past if we offer an abridged version of To Kill a Mockingbird (to avoid certain controversial words). Our recording is, as always, complete and unabridged! Free guides for some of these books are available at http://www.recordedbooks.com/guides. Have you read or listened to any of the below banned books? What is your favorite banned book?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous/Beatrice Sparks
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson (FREE lesson plans with audio! See Lesson 1 and Lesson 2.)
Taming the Star Runner by S.E. Hinton
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Summer of My German Soldier Bette Greene
Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Ulysses by James Joyce An AudioFile Earphones Award Winner
1984 by George Orwell
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Native Son by Richard Wright
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson An AudioFIle Earphones Award Winner & ALSC Notable Recording
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline B. Cooney

For a few additional links on book censorship, see our previous post: School Libraries and Censorship.

September Contest Winner

Congratulations to Nikki Coates, our September contest winner! Nikki, you’ll receive one copy of Dear Mr. Henshaw on CD to share with your students. We asked respondents to share stories about who inspired them, and we got some great responses! Here are a few of our favorites, but we encourage you to read the rest of the inspiring stories as well—perfect for a pick-me-up on this day of remembrance:

Nikki Coates: I have many people who have inspired me in my life. However the one that I think of first would be my chemistry teacher from high school. I used to hate all kinds of science, I was even nervous taking chemistry I didnt think I would pass. Science was always boring and hard for me. I had my teacher for chemistry my sophomore year and ap chemistry my senior year. Yes, I took two years even though I didnt need to. My teacher made it enjoyable and fun to learn. After being in her class for two years I started thinking about becoming a science teacher. However; once I started doing some observation hours I changed my mind and wanted to become a special ed teacher. I want students to learn and have fun and see that school isnt as bad as it seems!

John Bradford: My Catholic high school chaplain, Father William Schooler, inspired me. A true humanist, he encouraged the students to think for themselves – even if that put him at odds with the school administration or the other faculty. The books in his office were always available for loan, and he introduced me to C.S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and comparative religion.

Victoria Mazur: My fourth grade teacher, Miss Judy, was an inspiration to me as a budding writer. She allowed me to read voraciously and did not censor my creativity. Her incentives included a meal at her home (that would probably not be permitted now) and I will always remember my introduction to alfalfa sprouts. I threw up on the way home.

MaryAnn: Eleanor was the most amazing children’s librarian! Her enthusiasm inspired generations of readers in her public library, and her storytimes were legendary in the County. Most amazingly, she could locate a book just from a brief description of a character or situation. One day I heard a young lady ask her for a book tin which a girl sat on a porch and chewed gum…and Eleanor’s face lit up. Off she flew to the stacks, returning with the right book! She introduced me to the classics, to illustrators, to storytelling and to public service, and I would be thrilled to be remembered as her student!

Mike Jones: One person in my life who had a tremendous impact on me was my high school football coach. This coach didn’t just inspire, he forever changed me and the path my life took once I started playing for him. No one in my life had ever pushed me so hard, made me work so much, been so tough on me, or cared as much as he did. This man believed in me more than I believed in myself, and through his dedicated, persistent effort, he was able to reach me in a way that no teacher, coach, or person had ever done before. The main, and most important things that that this coach taught me had nothing to do with football but are tools that I will use the rest of my life; the ability to apply myself to the highest levels and work through whatever obstacles or adversity come my way.

If you didn’t get a chance to share a story about someone who inspired you, we’d still love to hear from you on this post. And as always, stay tuned for another contest next month!