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 [...]

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: [...]

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 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 [...]

RB Teacher’s Guide Samples

Do you use Recorded Books Teacher’s Guides? They are available for many titles in our catalog at $1.25 each, and come free in Homework Packs and Class Sets where available. Each reproducible Teacher’s Guide features:

Book summary
Author bio
Warm-up questions
Comprehension questions
Creative thinking questions
“Extending the lesson” cross-curricular section
two student assessments

Don’t know what an RB Teacher’s Guide is? Download [...]

Scott Westerfeld Offers Book for Free

Best-selling author Scott Westerfeld is offering the first book in his Uglies series, Uglies, for free in PDF form on his blog through the end of the month. Go HERE to download. This is a great opportunity – download the book and keep it on hand to share with students on computers, in printed form, [...]

August Giveaway – National Inventors Month

August is National Inventors Month, so we’re hoping to inspire some you inventors with this month’s giveaway: Brainstorm!: The Stories of Twenty American Kid Inventors by Tom Tucker. To win, leave a comment below with your favorite story of invention. It could be a cool story about how an invention came to be, an invention [...]

In Memory of Frank McCourt

ere at Recorded Books, we were very sad to learn about the recent passing of author and narrator Frank McCourt (19 August 1930–19 July 2009). Often described as a "late-bloomer," the son of Irish immigrants was born in Brooklyn, New York but lived in Ireland for much of his childhood. Times were tough—his father was [...]

Audiobooks at ALA

First of all, don’t forget about our contest to win a copy of My Sister’s Keeper on CD! Contest ends Monday, July 13 at 12:00PM Eastern.
If you’re attending ALA this year (click here if you still need a pass to the exhibit hall!), be sure to check out the audiobook events and stay tuned to [...]

Celebrate America

Happy Fourth of July! If you have some down-time for audiobooks in between enjoying BBQ and fireworks here are some selections highlighting America’s Independence Day:

Happy Birthday, America by Mary Pope Osborne
Independence Day by Richard Ford (National Book Critics’ Circle Award Finalist, PEN/Faulkner Award Winner, Pulitzer Prize Winner, New York Times Best Book of the Year)
1776 [...]