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Have you ever popped in an audiobook for your kids to listen to, and then realized HOURS later that you have been pulled into the story just as much as they have? To give you an idea, we recently had a long car ride (seven hours there and seven hours back) and almost five hours of each leg was spent listening to an audio book. I had a book along to read – and ZERO pages were turned because I didn’t want to miss anything!
On a whim last month, we picked up the first book in the Lemony Snicket Series of Unfortunate Events at the library. To give you an idea of how much we enjoyed it – we just finished the seventh book in the series (incidentally, there are THIRTEEN total). Yeah. We’re hooked.
The Quick Summary
The series follows the Baudelaire orphans and, well, the unfortunate events that seem to surround them. After the death of their parents, they are sent to live with a relative, Count Olaf, who is only intent on getting their fortune – and is a very evil and unkind man. The three children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are all wonderful children, but left in an unhappy and unfortunate situation – all the time. They escape from one dastardly event only to have misfortune follow them again and again. The fact that the entire series is called The Complete Wreck should give you a fairly good understanding of the nature of the books.
I will put in a brief disclaimer here to say that I do not feel this is a series for younger children because of some of the content in the stories. Our youngest is eight and we are comfortable with him listening, but you may want to do a little looking at the original book in the series and see if it is a good fit for your family.
What We Love (and groan over)
The first two books are read by Tim Curry (who does an amazing job). Books three through five are then read by the author (whom we don’t like as much). Fortunately Tim Curry returns in book six – and all is well again. Curry changes character voices, adds in extra sound effects, and just overall makes the stories even more enjoyable.
So far we’ve listened to…
We love the sidenotes that the author, Lemony Snicket, goes off on. There are constant explanations of what a difficult vocabulary word means (which are hilarious and to the point), the quick wit of the children, and the overall humor – we are always laughing at something.
Our favorite quote from the books so far:
“If one is allergic to something, one should never put that thing in one’s mouth. Especially if that thing is a cat.”
Throughout the book the author is constantly saying, “I wish I could tell you that things became better for the Baudelaire orphans, but they don’t.” Or, “If you are looking for a story with a happy ending, you may want to put this book down right now and find another story.” There are constant groans from the backseat as the kids listen along.
We still have five more books to run back to the library and listen grab, but we are obviously enjoying these. Have you listened to them or read them? I’d love to hear your thoughts too!
What are YOU reading or listening together right now?
Books We’ve Previously Read (or Listened to) Together
Here are a few other books that we’ve read together and blogged about. Click over to see our thoughts on them!
- Raiders from the Sea by Lois Walfrid Johnson
- Under Drake’s Flag
- The Mysterious Benedict Society
- Darien’s Rise {Adventures in Odyssey Passages}
- The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss
- Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
- The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins
- Sky Jumpers by Peggy Eddleman
- 25 Books We Plan to Read Together This Year
- 30 Picture Books in 30 Days
- Other Recent Audiobooks: A Year Down Yonder, Secrets at Sea, A Season of Gifts
- The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom
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I picked up A Series of Unfortunate Events last week at my library for a summer read aloud! We have done some audio books as well but I just hadn’t thought of it. Maybe I need to make a trip back to the library ;) Good to know that it’s such a funny series!
We love the Chronicles of Narnia set produced by Focus on the Family Radio Theatre…. it’s beautifully put together! I can’t count how many times we’ve listened to the whole series;)
Same here!! That set is amazing!!! All of their audio drama sets are wonderful!
And if you like those, check out the ones from Heirloom Audio!
Well we were listening to them fairly quickly until someone.. *cough Jolanthe cough* had to borrow ours *winks* We started #5 tonight!
I know NOT of which you speak… but the 11 hours we spent in the car with peace and quiet may be mainly due to you and your generosity! :)
We went through all of those as family read alouds. The kids enjoyed them and I really liked the vocabulary explanations as well. I grabbed two the Mysterious Benedict Society books at a book sale recently and hope to read them with the girls. We are currently reading Gregor and the Prophecy of Blood. Another you might like is the Mister Max series, which starts with The Book of Lost Things.
Loved the Gregor series – and Mysterious Benedict too!
I absolutely love reading aloud to my kids 11,8 and we use audio books as well. But the mood in the books needs to be happy for me… I dont think we need to add extra sadness by reading books and sad books like the one you mentioned where kids are having a hard time, makes me sad as well. so I would not read it. My kids always wondered why almost all classics have orphans as the lead character or at least one parent who is not around/deceased… even Nancy Drew?
that is just me….
thanks for the list
I wouldn’t say the nature of these is sad – especially based on Temne reactions of our kids. :) You may just want to look at the first book and see.
ok, then I will read the first one myself.
thanks!
That’s how I get pulled into many of these series! :) it feels funny reading children’s lit for myself – but we’ve found some great series!
So, I know this post is from 3 months ago, but I finally read it after going through all of my saved FB links, lol. We love audiobooks at our house too. We just finished listening to a new one called “The Island of Dr. Libris” by Chris Grabenstein. So good!! My 4 boys would ask everyday if we needed to go anywhere just so we could listen to more.