AUDIOBOOK COLLECTION: Audiobooks & Playaways

Presents an unabridged reading of George Orwell's political satire in which the animals take over running the farm, but find their utopian state turning into a dictatorship.

A thirteen-year-old Dutch-Jewish girl records her impressions of the two years she and seven others spent hiding from the Nazis before they were discovered and taken to concentration camps.

A biography of forty-fourth U.S. President Barack Obama, covering his upbringing, education, work as a community organizer in Chicago, connection to Civil Rights, and rise to the presidency after a long campaign, and includes a timeline and glossary.

In 1936, three children meet at the Mercy Home for Negro Orphans in New York State, and while not all three are orphans, they are all dealing with grief and loss which together, along with the help of a sympathetic staff member and the boxing matches of Joe Louis, they manage to overcome.

Examines the history of the atomic bomb, discussing the discovery of the behavior of uranium when placed next to radioactive material, the race to build a bomb, and the impact of the weapon on societies around the world.

The extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller that is now a major motion picture, Markus Zusak's unforgettable story is about the ability of books to feed the soul. It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. Liesel Meminger is a foster girl living outside of Munich, who scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can't resist-books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement. In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak, author of I Am the Messenger, has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

Philip, an adolescent white boy who is blinded in a torpedo attack at sea during World War II, acquires a new type of vision, courage, and love when he is stranded on a tiny Caribbean island with Timothy, a kind, elderly black man.

After dark in a Mexican border town, a father holds open a hole in a wire fence as his wife and two small boys crawl through. So begins this collection of twelve autobiographical stories by professor Francisco Jimenez, who at the age of four illegally crossed the border with his family in 1947. "The Circuit" is the story of a young, wise and sensitive boy, Panchito and his trumpet. These independent but intertwined stories follow the family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots--and back again--over a number of years.The little family of four grows into ten and impermanence and poverty define their lives. But with faith, hope, and back-breaking work, the family endures. Beautifully and authentically rendered by actor and playwright Adrian Vargas, these stories tell of the almost unendurable journey most migrant campesinos undertake to find the American Dream. The recording concludes with an afterword recorded by the author. Recommended for Grades 5 and up.

In the city of Ember, twelve-year-old Lina trades jobs on Assignment Day to be a Messenger to run to new places in her decaying but beloved city, perhaps even to glimpse Unknown Regions.

Young Clara Barton is shy and lonely in her early days at boarding school. She is snubbed by the other girls because she doesn't know how to talk to them. But when she gets an opportunity to assist the local doctor, her shyness disappears, and Clara begins to discover her true calling as a nurse. When her beloved dog, Patch, is run over by a wagon, Clara nurses him back to health. Clara will grow up to become the founder of the American Red Cross and the most famous woman in America! Geared for children ages eight and up, the Childhood of Famous Americans series is lively and inspirational, an ideal way to sweep today's young reader into the era of America's historical heroes.

Willow Chance is a twelve-year-old genius, obsessed with nature and diagnosing medical conditions, who finds it comforting to count by 7s. It has never been easy for her to connect with anyone other than her adoptive parents, but that hasnt kept her from leading a quietly happy life...until now. Suddenly Willows world is tragically changed when her parents both die in a car crash, leaving her alone in a baffling world. The triumph of this book is that it is not a tragedy. This extraordinarily odd, but extraordinarily endearing, girl manages to push through her grief. Her journey to find a fascinatingly diverse and fully believable surrogate family is a joy and a revelation to read.

Pocahontas was the special favorite of her father, the great chief Pawhatan. And when the English settlers came to Virginia, she became a "sister" to Captain John Smith, who was "adopted" into her tribe. She was permitted to move freely between the Indian and white worlds, and her life seemed perfect. But soon there was trouble. Pocahontas was kidnapped by the settlers, who forced her to live like a white woman. She yearned for her father to meet the colonists' demands so all would be well again. But before Pocahontas made peace, she would be asked to turn her back on everything she loved-and to leave her Indian world behind forever. Highly acclaimed and winner of multiple awards, this book is recommended for Grades 4 and up.

A girl, having travelled with her mother to an animal sanctuary for bonobos in the Congo, struggles to survive with the animals after revolution breaks out and she and the chimpanzees are forced to flee into the jungle.

Nothing could hold him! He was the Escape King! He was The Great Houdini! But before that he was Ehrich Weiss, a poor immigrant boy with big dreams. Before long he was reinventing himself by making elephants disappear (among other illusions) and perfecting his escapes from chains, handcuffs and straightjackets. This witty and insightful biography by Newbery Award Winner Sid Fleischman tells as much as it dares! Recommended for Grades 4 and up.

In alternating chapters, two teenagers describe how their feelings about themselves, each other, and their families have changed over the years.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

Crossing paths at an inn, thirteenth-century travelers impart the tales of a monastery oblate, a Jewish refugee, and a psychic peasant girl with a loyal greyhound, the three of whom join forces on a chase through France to escape persecution.

In 1947, a Chinese child comes to Brooklyn where she becomes Americanized at school, in her apartment building, and by her love for baseball.

In the Pacific there is an island that looks like a big fish sunning itself in the sea.  Around it, blue dolphins swim, otters play, and sea elephants and sea birds abound.  Once, Indians also lived on the island.  And when they left and sailed to the east, one young girl was left behind. This is the story of Karana, the Indian girl who lived alone for years on the Island of the Blue Dolphins.  Year after year, she watched one season pass into another and waited for a ship to take her away.  But while she waited, she kept herself alive by building a shelter, making weapons, finding food, and fighting her enemies, the wild dogs.  It is not only an unusual adventure of survival, but also a tale of natural beauty and personal discovery. From the Paperback edition.

This is a story about me, Lily. And me, Jake. We're twins and we're exactly alike. Not exactly! Whatever. This is a book we wrote about the summer we turned eleven and Jake ditched me. Please. I just started hanging out with some guys in the neighborhood. Right. So anyway, this is a book about goobers and supergoobers bullies clubhouses true friends things getting built and wrecked and rebuilt and about figuring out who we are. We wrote this together (sort of) so you'll get to see both sides of our story. But you'll probably agree with my side. You always have to have the last word, don't you? Yes!

A story filled with danger and excitement, Johnny Tremain tells of the turbulent, passionate times in Boston just before the Revolutionary War. Johnny, a young apprentice silversmith, is caught with Otis, Hancock, and John and Samuel Adams in the exciting operations and subterfuges leading up to the Boston Tea Party and the Battle of Lexington. As Johnny is forced into the role of a full-grown man in the face of his new country s independence, he finds that his relations with those he loves changes for the better as well. Johnny Tremain is historical fiction at its best, portraying the living drama of Revolutionary Boston through the shrewd eyes of an observant boy.

"In preparing the Life of Lee for Children, for use in the Public Schools, I beg leave to place before teachers good reasons for employing it as a supplementary reader. "First, I urge the need of interesting our children in history at an early age. From observation I find that the minds of children who study history early expand more rapidly than those who are restricted to the limits of stories in readers. While teaching pupils to read, why not fix in their minds the names and deeds of our great men, thereby laying the foundation of historical knowledge and instilling true patriotism into their youthful souls? "Secondly, in looking over the lives of our American heroes we find not one which presents such a picture of moral grandeur as that of Lee. Place this picture before the little ones and you cannot fail to make them look upward to noble ideals."-Mary L. Williamson, 1898

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, eleven-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia, and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan.

A biography of French chemist Louis Pasteur, discussing his childhood and youth, examining his accomplishments in microbiology, germ theory, immunization, vaccination, and other areas, and looking at his last days.

Stargirl has moved and left everything behind: Arizona, Mica High, enchanted desert places–and Leo. He’s all she can think about, and her life begins to feel like a parade of unhappy anniversaries. Then Stargirl meets her wonderfully bizarre new neighbors: Dootsie, the curly-headed five-year-old “human bean”; Betty Lou, who hasn’t stepped outside her house for nine years; Charlie, who sits among the tombstones; hot-tempered Alvina with that one glittery nail; and Perry Delloplane, the blue-eyed thief who soon lays his own claim to Stargirl’s heart. In letters to Leo over the course of a year, Stargirl comes to find hope in new places: mockingbirds, donut angels, moon flowers, and the Winter Solstice. But what’s life without Leo? Will he–can he–answer that one crucial question she asks every morning to the rising sun?

An exploration of the life and career of Michael Jackson that discusses his childhood, family, success, personal relationships, controversy, and untimely death.

A Midsummer Night's Dream must be one of the most enduringly popular of Shakespeare's plays, and it is not difficult to see why: the work blends several kinds of comedy with a powerful atmosphere of magic and mystery and a satisfying set of contrasts – between city and country, reason and imagination, love and infatuation.

Deza Malone, the smartest girl in her class in Gary, Indiana, accompanies her mother and older brother on a trip to find her father, an African American man who left to find work after the Great Depression hit. They end up in a Hooverville outside of Flint, Michigan, and her brother attempts to be a performer while Deza and her mother search for a home.

From the Newbery Award-winning author of Across Five Aprils and Up a Road Slowly comes a tale of a brave young man's struggle to find his own strength during the Great Depression. In 1932, Americans' dreams were simple: a job, food to eat, a place to sleep, and shoes without holes. But for millions of people these simple needs were nothing more than dreams. When he was just fifteen years old, Josh had to make his own way through a country of angry and frightened people. This is the story of his struggle to find a life for himself during those turbulent times.

From the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, this classic story of an unlikely pair, two migrant workers in California during the Great Depression who grasp for their American Dream, profoundly touches readers and audiences alike. George and his simple-minded friend Lenny dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own--a couple of acres and a few pigs, chickens, and rabbits back in Hill Country where land is cheap. But after they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas Valley of California, their hopes, like "the best laid schemes o'mice an' men," begin to go awry.

Follows the three major food chains that feed humans--industrial, organic, and hunter-gatherer--from the earth to four meals, exploring the ethical and political effects of one's food choices.

Discusses the placement of over 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children in homes throughout the Midwest from 1854 to 1929 by recounting the story of one boy and his brothers.

No one ever said life was easy. But Ponyboy is pretty sure that he's got things figured out. He knows that he can count on his brothers, Darry and Sodapop. And he knows that he can count on his friends--true friends who would do anything for him, like Johnny and Two-Bit. But not on much else besides trouble with the Socs, a vicious gang of rich kids whose idea of a good time is beating up on "greasers" like Ponyboy. At least he knows what to expect--until the night someone takes things too far. The Outsiders is a dramatic and enduring work of fiction that laid the groundwork for the YA genre. S. E. Hinton's classic story of a boy who finds himself on the outskirts of regular society remains as powerful today as it was the day it was first published.

A classic novella from Nobel Prize#65533;e"winner John Steinbeck#65533;e"a stirring work that examines the fallacy of the American dreamFor the diver Kino, finding a magnificent pearl means the promise of a better life for his impoverished family. His dream blinds him to the greed and suspicions the pearl arouses in him and his neighbors, and even his loving wife cannot temper his obsession or stem the events leading to tragedy. For Steinbeck, Kino and his wife illustrate the fall from innocence experienced by people who believe that wealth erases all problems.

Set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice. And it is also Cassie's story--Cassie Logan, an independent girl who discovers over the course of an important year why having land of their own is so crucial to the Logan family, even as she learns to draw strength from her own sense of dignity and self-respect.

A vacant lot, rat-infested and filled with garbage, looked like no place for a garden. Especially to a neighborhood of strangers where no one seems to care. Until one day, a young girl clears a small space and digs into the hard-packed soil to plant her precious bean seeds. Suddenly, the soil holds promise: To Curtis, who believes he can win back Lateesha's heart with a harvest of tomatoes; to Virgil's dad, who sees a fortune to be made from growing lettuce; and even to Maricela, sixteen and pregnant, wishing she were dead.Thirteen very different voices -- old, young, Haitian, Hispanic, tough, haunted, and hopeful -- tell one amazing story about a garden that transforms a neighborhood.

Unhappy about his baby sister's illness and the chaos of moving into a dilapidated old house, Michael retreats to the garage and finds a mysterious stranger who is something like a bird and something like an angel.

A modern-day classic and New York Times bestseller that celebrates the power of individuality and personal expression from beloved Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli. Stargirl. From the day she arrives at quiet Mica High in a burst of color and sound, the hallways hum with the murmur of "Stargirl, Stargirl." She captures Leo Borlock' s heart with just one smile. She sparks a school-spirit revolution with just one cheer. The students of Mica High are enchanted. At first. Then they turn on her. Stargirl is suddenly shunned for everything that makes her different, and Leo, panicked and desperate with love, urges her to become the very thing that can destroy her: normal. In this celebration of nonconformity, Newbery Medalist Jerry Spinelli weaves a tense, emotional tale about the perils of popularity and the thrill and inspiration of first love. Don't miss the sequel, Love, Stargirl.

When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.

What was the secret to surviving the death camps? How did you keep from dying of heartbreak in a place of broken hearts and broken bodies? "Think of it as a game, Jack," an older prisoner tells him. "Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis." Caught up in Hitler's Final Solution to annihilate Europe's Jews, fifteen-year-old Jack is torn from his family and thrown into the nightmarish world of the concentration camps. Despite intolerable conditions, Jack resolves not to hate his captors, and vows to see his family again. He forges friendships with other prisoners, and together they struggle to make it one more hour, one more day. But even with his strong will to live, can Jack survive the life-and-death game he is forced to play with his Nazi captors? Award-winning author Andrea Warren has crafted an unforgettable true a story of courage, friendship, family love, and a boy becoming a man in the shadow of the Third Reich.

Six-year-old Susan helps her grandmother in the kitchen and begins to learn the role of women in the household. It is 1825. Women are not allowed to vote, and the law says they must obey their husbands. Seeing how hard the women of her family work, Susan is struck by how unfair this law is. When she grows up, Susan will lead the movement to win women the right to vote.This story gives children a historical sense of how one woman helped to bring about the civil rights that are enjoyed today.Geared for children ages eight and up, the Childhood of Famous Americans series is lively and inspirational, an ideal way to sweep today's young reader into the era of America's historical heroes.

When Temple Grandin was born, her parents knew that she was different. It wasn't until years later that she was diagnosed with autism, a brain disorder that makes communication difficult. Today, Dr. Temple Grandin is a brilliant scientist and professor of animal science at Colorado State University. Her world-changing career has revolutionized the livestock industry-each year, half the cattle in the United States are handled in cruelty-free facilities she has designed. She is also a passionate advocate for autism, using her experience to prove that people with this disorder can have "normal" lives. To achieve this unprecedented success, Temple used a unique ability: she thinks visually, the same way animals do. Because she thinks in pictures, she can see the world as a cow, or a dog, or a pig might see it. And so she knows that animals raised for food deserve good lives and should be treated with respect. Now she gives them their voices.

Bradbury's Mars is a place of hope, dreams, and metaphor-of crystal pillars and fossil seas-where a fine dust settles on the great empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn-first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars...and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race. Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles is a classic work of twentieth-century literature whose extraordinary power and imagination remain undimmed by time's passage. In connected, chronological stories, a true grandmaster once again enthralls, delights, and challenges us with his vision and his heart-starkly and stunningly exposing in brilliant spacelight our strength, our weakness, our folly, and our poignant humanity on a strange and breathtaking world where humanity does not belong. The twenty-seven stories contained in The Martian Chronicles are "Rocket Summer," "Ylla," "The Summer Night," "The Earth Men," "The Taxpayer," "The Third Expedition," "-And the Moon Be Still as Bright," "The Settlers," "The Green Morning," "The Locusts," "Night Meeting," "The Shore," "The Fire Balloons," "Interim," "The Musicians," "The Wilderness," "The Naming of Names," "Usher II," "The Old Ones," "The Martian," "The Luggage Store," "The Off Season," "The Watchers," "The Silent Towns," "The Long Years," "There Will Come Soft Rains," and "The Million-Year Picnic."

Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize-winning masterwork of honor and injustice in the deep south--and the heroism of one man in the face of blind and violent hatred, available now for the first time as a digital audiobook. One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, served as the basis for an enormously popular motion picture, and was voted one of the best novels of the twentieth century by librarians across the country. A gripping, heart-wrenching, and wholly remarkable tale of coming-of-age in a South poisoned by virulent prejudice, it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father-a crusading local lawyer-risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

Young Jim Hawkins lives a quiet life as the son of an innkeeper. This all changes when an ancient sailor takes up lodging at the inn. Jim is both horrified and fascinated by the captain's bloody stories. But when the old man dies without paying his bill, Jim must search the sailor's one possession, a large sea chest, for payment. In doing so, he unknowingly pockets an old map from the chest. But Jim is not the only one interested in the sea chest, and he has to flee when a group of cutthroats shows up to ransack the few possessions of the old sailor. The family doctor recognizes the map as the key to a fortune, which commences a Caribbean treasure hunt. With the pirates only steps behind, Jim races to reach Treasure Island. Seventeen set sail, but how many will return? Complete with peg-legs, parrots, pieces-of-eight, and the original Long John Silver, this novel launched Stevenson on his long and fascinating writing career and marked the beginning of the pirate genre.

In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African-American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.