hey I am going on a long car ride with a 5 year old and a 7 year old, any suggestions for audiobooks? We have heard all of the Dory Fantasmagorys (also if you weren't aware, the Dory Fantasmagory audiobooks are incredible)
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The Ramona audiobooks are fantastic. Listening to them on long car rides when my kids were those ages convinced me that Beverly Cleary might be the Great American Novelist.
my seven year old son loves the Mackenzie Blue series audiobooks. Other great series we've read aloud but not listened to: The Imaginary Veterinary; Warriors (feral cats who live in warrior clans)
If you subscribe to Sparkle Stories, you can listen to their whole story archive, including story series that are as long as audiobooks. The Junkyard Tales stories are the adults' consensus favorite in my house; my oldest kid likes the Windward Ho! series about girls who sail on a pirate ship.
All Kate diCamillo, but esp The Magician’s Elephant & Because of Winn Dixie. The whole Ramona Quimby series, narr. by Stockard Channing, all the A.A. Milne, all the James Herriot for kids (gorgeous animal stories), Melendy Quartet and Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright…
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! (Also read by David Tennant.) And we’ve liked these as read-alouds (not sure about the audiobooks): Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, The Wild Robot, The Trumpet of the Swan. Good luck!!
I remember hearing my first one (about Geronimo trying to plan a party) and was not prepared at all for this wildly popular series of children’s books to be about a gay bachelor newspaper editor
Not sure how modern kids would react to them, but as kids we wore out several tapes of Shel Silverstein's poetry - might be worth trying Where the Sidewalk Ends and A Light in the Attic
The Secret Garden was available free for years on iTunes or Apple Books, read by Karen Gillan, and is phenomenal! My kids love the Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd though that can be hard on adults (it’s spastic) and Wow in the World, for podcasts.
Me and my sisters LOVED Hank the Cowdog when we were kids on road trips! It’s been so long since I heard them that I don’t remember the exact age they’re aimed at but I know I was pretty young and still loved them!
The live from Mount Olympus podcast does great audio dramas based on Greek Mythology. Well-produced and good casts (Isabella Rossellini and John Tuturro included).
Chuck & Danielle (about a girl & her very nervous whippet) was such a fav when I was younger we borrowed it from the library for multiple road trips. Also have you done Box Car Children yet? Is Redwall too old for them?
"Fortunately, the Milk" by Neil Gaiman. Short but great; Horton Halfpott by Tim Angleberger; any of the Timmy Failure books by Stephan Pastis; a Whole Nuther Story by Cuthbert Soup
We did a two week camping road trip to four national parks when my kids were that way. We listened to a lot of wow in the world. Radiolab for kids is also good. And the the They Might Be Giants science album is fun, informative, and won't drive you completely nuts.
Afraid I'm a little out of the loop on kid lit, but are there audio plays out there they might like? As a kid I had the Let's Pretend story records (amazing art on those sleeves) that gave me a life-long love of radio drama. While these probably aren't available anymore, something like it might.
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The Secret Explorers
Magic Treehouse
Baseball Mysteries
The Giggler Treatment (BBC Audio) https://amzn.eu/d/0WzDYad
My kids and I love this version.
https://apps.npr.org/best-books/#view=covers&year=2023
http://www.firstvoice.org/digital-music-store
This is not, to my knowledge, a real audio book for children, but I think it should be, for parents everywhere
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51FT7IT81ML.jpg
A Series of Unfortunate Events—my daughters loved it.