Do You Read With Your Ears?

National Literacy Trust Article

“Our new research review, released today, shows that engagement with audiobooks can benefit children’s reading skills and enjoyment, as well as their mental well-being and emotional intelligence.

With audiobook sales predicted to overtake those of ebooks in 2020 and the popularity of the format amongst children increasing by 138% in the last year alone, we set out to explore existing evidence on the role of audiobooks in supporting children’s literacy inside and outside of the classroom.”

Do you read audiobooks?

Have you read any great ones this year?

Do you encourage your children to listen to audiobooks?

I’ve reached the point that I listen to books about as often as I physically read them. Usually if it’s a nonfiction book I’m physically reading, but  everything else I listen to. Not always as an audiobook either.

For some time I’ve been using an ebook reader app on android, FBreader. They also have an apple app. In short it uses computer generated voices to read the text of ebooks. However, computer voices have come a long way, and no longer sound like Hawking (though you can still use his voice if you prefer).

My daughter is home schooled, and we make her read her text books. So when it comes to fiction, we’ve moved almost entirely to audiobooks. The one exception being graphic novels. 

Narwhal and Jelly Series anyone?

Even as an adult, I love reading these books as they come out.