Land Found by the Self-taught and Audiobook Island

There are taught and self-taught methods for learning, depending on a person's desire to explore. Sometimes I imagine being brought up with the internet. Exploring. Rather than a library of books, there are myriads. As a child, I went from authors to genres in my search, fairytale, animal novels, magic, and finally mystery. Few juvenile books are made into movies. I'm sure audiobooks would attract a younger me like islands viewed from land.

So I released my first audiobook, TheWide Awake Loons, narrated by Aven Shore. Promo codes for the free book can be requested at Message on its Facebook page.

One thing I learned from memorizing Peter Rabbit so that I could point at each word was that my four older siblings and my parents weren't all that interested in picture books. The advice for relationships is to find joint interests. Pictures with headlines came daily in the newspaper and weekly in Look, Life, and Time magazines. Sitting next to someone on the couch, I picked up words like flood, ice cream, or win and won accompanying pictures of local basketball stars. 

 

Drawn on as a reader, I was eventually forbidden to use my allowance money on comic books, Superman and Archie bought at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket. No more tilting graphics. What if there had been audiobooks to give a children's novel more sensation? Reading and watching movies don't go together. Reading along with an audiobook would feel like a shared experience and give a sense of involvement.

A reading specialist explained findings in a Scholastic article “Why Audiobooks Are Great for Kids”:

“She’ll be able to delve deeper into complicated topics and listen to better-quality books than she might find at her own level. That exposure strengthens comprehension skills,  particularly for children who have reading difficulties, says [Mary Beth] Crosby Carroll [reading specialist].”

Here are statistics from a The Booklist Reader article, “New Research Shows Audiobooks Have Powerful Impact on Literacy Development”:

Listening to audiobooks:
• Increases reading accuracy by 52%
• Improves comprehension by 76%
• Increases recall 40% when combined with print materials (vs. print alone)

The first audiobook I heard was in a set of Tolkien, found at a book sale. That was wonderful since I read all of his fantasy series. And I actually preferred the audiobooks to some of the movie material.

Ever since the VHS movies became available, I have found that I can switch from books to another medium as easily as anyone. I've realized that story is all for me. However I continue as a used book dealer to explore and buy books that are new to me, even when they are decades old.

Audio is sometimes silent hearing so it is a part of reading. I hadn't expected to read the ancient historian Herodotus until I was savoring a voice with the rare quality of Socrates in Plato's Republic. Then I wanted to find out how Herodotus achieved his travels north to Thrace, east to Persia, and south down the Nile in a dangerous time. At Google Books I found an “imaginary biography”, written in the 1850's. I hadn't planned to read much of that either but once I got started with the author James Talboys Wheeler, I couldn't put it down. Scenes with dialogue and description enhanced the ancient world. That happens when exploring. Subject is land where, if a person disembarks, they might stay awhile. How much better to experience it in more than one dimension.

My new cat Irene, a Maine coon mix, was a rescue from the North Woods resort region. This winter she is ten months and responding to “Wild Sounds of the Northwoods” by Lang Elliott and Ted Mack. As if this tape was made to be a cat audiobook. Cats are among the greatest of animal explorers!