Daddy, The Audio Books are Great

Mummy, are we home yet. How many times have you heard your 4 year old ask this question from the back seat of the car as you drive the last hundred miles home after the summer vacation.

On the outward journey the question was Mummy, are we there yet. And, despite the fact that the holiday home was still four hours away, the question kept coming every five minutes.

This certainly annoys the older kids and, tension within the confines of the car can start to rise. So, what can be done to calm the nerves of the tormented driver who has quite enough to do maintaining his concentration on the busy highways.

Finding a way to keep the kids occupied is a must. The I Spy game is good for maybe half an hour although I remember one episode that lasted a lot longer thanks to a not so clever mix-up by my six year old.

She spied something beginning with w s and of course we all thought this meant windscreen. But windscreen it wasn't and many miles later nobody got the answer. And there was a good reason for this, because her nibs got her steering wheel and her windscreen muddled up! She lost some brownie points for that.

So when I Spy is played out, what then. Well, there’s always Give Me a Clue but, some of those end up in almighty rows because the clue was a bit off. No thanks, a row in the back seat of the car is not a great recipe for an enjoyable journey. What then should we do to keep three restless kids occupied as we drive that long and boring journey to the seaside.

This summer, we found the answer. We had to dig a bit into our hard earned cash but it was worth it. We bought each of them an MP3 player, downloaded some children’s audiobooks from the net and as Shakespeare might say, the rest is silence. And, silence it was because the audiobooks we chose were fairly lengthy, now, not as long as War and Peace (60 hours) but long enough to keep the little darlings quiet for most of the journey.

We had toyed with the idea of burning some audiobooks onto CDs and letting everyone hear the same story, but, I don't like Shakespeare, I don't like Superman, I don't like Roald Dahl etc..etc… So, instead, invest a little in the MP3 players and get the kids help in the selection. MP3 players are not just for this trip. Take a look at the recommended reading titles from your local high school or college, and you will find that many of the educational titles are readily available in audiobook format. The daily trips on the school bus could easily be put to good use by listening to some of the classic literature titles from the curriculum.

Anyway, here are some of the audiobooks we selected: The Book of Pirates, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Chaos King, Groosam Grange, Coraline, and Alice in Wonderland. And, there are plenty of titles for the adults as well.

Ross Gill is a published author and webmaster of best-audiobooks.com. His website has a wide range of Children's Audio Books and High School Audio Books.