Health & Family Audiobooks

26 Fairmount Avenue: What a Year!

Tomie celebrates his sixth birthday in style, dresses up as Snow White for his first Halloween, celebrates holidays with his family, suffers through a bout of the chicken pox, and gets to stay up to see the new year in!

Tomie Depaola (Author), Tomie Depaola (Narrator)

Audiobook

Amber Brown Is Feeling Blue

Nine-year-old Amber Brown faces further complications because of her parents' divorce when her father plans to move back from Paris and she must decide which parent she will be with on Thanksgiving.

Paula Danziger (Author), Dana Lubotsky (Narrator)

Audiobook

Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit

Amber Brown is in deep trouble. Lately, no matter what she does, it isn't enough. She straightens up her room - sort of. She does her homework - well, most of it. And she agrees to meet Max, her mother's new boyfriend - but she doesn't agree to like him. Now her mother is angry, her teacher wants all of her homework, and Max keeps trying to make her laugh. What's Amber to do? All she wants is a little extra credit. She really tries...But how will she succeed?

Paula Danziger (Author), Dana Lubotsky (Narrator)

Audiobook

Shooting the Moon

Edgar Award-winning author Frances O'Roark Dowell is acclaimed for the rich characterizations in her poignant coming-of-age novels. Drawing on her experience as a colonel's daughter, Dowell delivers an evocative portrait of a 12-year-old girl whose view of life, war, and her dad- Fort Hood's base commander-changes as her corpsman brother sends home haunting images from Vietnam. An eloquent narration captures the emotional intensity of the novel's gripping prose.

Frances O'Roark Dowell (Author), Jessica Almasy (Narrator)

Audiobook

Waiting for Normal

Author of the award-winning Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, Leslie Connor has also won great acclaim for Waiting for Normal. Addie's life has always been all or nothing. And now that Dwight and mommers are divorced, Addie's stuck in a tiny trailer on a Schenectady corner with a mom who's rarely there. Finding friendship at the gas station across the street, Addie clings to the ever- dimming possibility that one day she'll have a normal, happy home.

Leslie Connor (Author), Angela Jayne Rogers (Narrator)

Audiobook

Still Just Grace

Charise Mericle Harper's Just Grace books have earned widespread critical acclaim and many young fans. This year Grace is determined to do three things: help her grandmother move to her fancy new apartment, make sure the new neighbor boy who can do headstands doesn't steal her best friend, and get her teacher to start calling her Grace instead of "Just Grace.

Charise Mericle Harper, Julia Gibson (Author), Michele Medlin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Linden Tree

When eleven-year-old Katy Sue loses her mother, Edna, to meningitis, she and her family must adjust to life without her. The rural farm in the 1940s provides a natural backdrop that is rhythmic and routine but unforgiving, even when a family member dies. The house's haunted emptiness is filled only when Aunt Katherine, Edna's youngest sister, comes to the family's aid, as does Jake, an ornithologist and family friend. Katy Sue, the youngest of the three children, struggles to define her place in the family and understand what the loss of her mother means for her now. With the guidance of her teacher, Mrs. Breton, Katy Sue begins to contemplate the shape of her family and the farm through drawing, a process that allows her to accept her father's soon-to-be wife, farm life without her mother, and, eventually, her own role within the family. "Gavin's interpretation of a wide range of emotions is respectful and clear. Her voice becomes gently gruff for Katy Sue's strong and loving father and takes on a higher, slightly shaky timbre for her anxious older sister. Gavin brings a casual, homey feel to the novel, dropping the final g (as in cookin'), while maintaining a reflective tone. This story sensitively captures the sorrow, loneliness, and small moments of joy that Katy Sue feels, with Gavin's reading eliciting deep compassion for the young protagonist."-Booklist

Ellie Mathews (Author), Marguerite Gavin (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Secret Garden

When Mary Lennox's parents die from cholera in India, the spoiled orphan is transplanted to her uncle's 600-year-old gloomy and secretive estate in England. She is certain that she is destined for misery at Misselthwaite Manor. When Mary meets the old groundskeeper, he is the first to tell her what he thinks of her, "We was wove out of th' same cloth. We're neither of us good lookin' an' we're both of us as sour as we look. We've got the same nasty tempers, both of us, I'll warrant." However, she soon discovers an arched doorway into an overgrown garden, locked shut since the death of her aunt ten years earlier. Fate grants Mary access to the secret garden and she begins transforming it into a thing of beauty--unaware that she too is changing.

Frances Hodgson Burnett (Author), Josephine Bailey (Narrator)

Audiobook

Lost and Found

The Grayson twins are moving to a new town. Again. Although it's a drag to be constantly mistaken for one another, still, during those first days at a new school, there's nothing better than a twin brother. But on day one of sixth grade, Ray stays home sick, and Jay is on his own. And--no big deal. It's a pretty nice school, good kids too. But Jay quickly discovers a major mistake; no one at this school seems to know a thing about his brother. Ray's not on the attendance lists, doesn't have a locker, doesn't even have a student folder. Jay almost tells a teacher, but decides that this lost information could be very...useful. And fun. Maybe even a little dangerous. As these two clever boys exploit a clerical oversight, each one finds new views of selfhood, friendship, learning, and honesty. Entertaining and thought-provoking, this is Andrew Clements at his best.

Andrew Clements (Author), Keith Nobbs (Narrator)

Audiobook

'Stop in the name of pants!'

Sound the Cosmic Horn for bestselling author Louise Rennison's ninth book of the confessions of crazy but loveable teenager Georgia Nicolson! Now that Georgia has finally won over gorgey Masimo, the Italian Stallion, her old friend and lip-nibbling partner Dave the Laugh has popped up again. Will Georgia go to Pizza-a-gogo land to visit dreamy Masimo? Or could her perfect boy be closer than she thinks. A Sex Kitty's life is never simple... More hilarious confessions from our fave teen drama queen, Georgia Nicolson.

Louise Rennison (Author), Louise Rennison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the river bank, and of having nothing to do...when suddenly a White Rabbit with pink eyes ran by her. Alice did not think it so very strange to hear the Rabbit say to itself, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket and then hurried on, she started to wonder! Running after the strange fellow, she was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole. Down jumped Alice after it (never considering how in the world she was to get out again) and she tumbled into a curious world inhabited by the Mad Hatter, the Ugly Duchess, the Mock Turtle, the Cheshire Cat, and more… With his marvelous sense of the absurd, Lewis Carroll's whimsical, fantastical tale delighted children and adults when it was first published in 1865 and has since become a treasured classic of literature.

Lewis Carroll (Author), Jim Dale (Narrator)

Audiobook

Outside Beauty

There's only one way Shelby and her sisters can describe their mother: she's a sexpot. She collects men (and loans, spending money, and gifts of all kinds) from all over the country. Sure, she's atypical, but she's also more than a pretty face and nail polish -- she's confident and brave and lives lifeon her own terms. And her daughters adore her, and work together to keep the family grounded in a way their mother can't. Then a late-night car crash shatters everything, including their mother's arm and face. Suddenly, the family is scattered across the country, each girl being sent to live with her respective father. While Helen undergoes surgery and post-surgery, the sisters try to adjust to a life without each other. The trouble is, they're NOT adjusting, and the youngest, Maddie, is so terrified of her father that she's withdrawing...from her sisters, and from herself. That's when Shelby realizes something must be done -- something drastic -- to reclaim her family. At turns wickedly funny and unflinchingly haunting, Outside Beauty showcases Cynthia Kadohata's unerring ability to explore the bonds that bind.

Cynthia Kadohata (Author), Sue Jean Kim (Narrator)

Audiobook