Librarian, columnist, and blogger (Audiobooker) Mary Burkey knows her audiobooks, and in Audiobooks for Youth: A Practical Guide to Sound Literature (ALA) she proves it with this thorough, cogent, well-organized, and insightful publication. She covers the history of children’s audiobooks, gives us definitions, brings us inside the production of an audiobook via interviews with narrators and producers, and then helps us “listen with a critical ear.” And if that’s not enough, sprinkled throughout are brief, not-to-be-missed essays by audiobook pioneers, experts, and authors (Jack Gantos: “When I narrate a book…the voice of the main character is the emotional rudder of the recording. Through the recorded voice, readers feel a deeper emotional intimacy with the character, the story — and with me, too”).

This post is part of Audiobook Week on Out of the Box. For more, click on the audiobooks tag.