From: emily nichols <emilylnichols>
Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:03:20 -0400

[posted on behalf of Fern Kory who was having difficulty getting through]

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I'm excited about these awards, which draw attention to an important literacy resource that is, like all good literacy resources, also a source of enormous pleasure. I couldn't be happier to have these recommendations.

I have listened to *Nation*, which was just terrific. The narrator's *Wee Free Men* is my favorite audiobook ever*:* I feel sorry for anyone who has not heard Briggs exclaim "crivens!"

What surprises me about audiobooks is that I almost never feel like the reader is "interpreting" the work in a way that interferes with my own reading of it. The books are certainly "performed" and this brings them to life for me, but I don't feel like I'm getting a someone else's angle on the story the way I do when I see a production of a Shakespeare play. I have eschewed "dramatized" versions and I generally feel that music and other additions are intrusive, but not always. I've listened to the audiobook version of *Feed, *which does jazz up the interpolated advertisements with music and sound very effectively and, I think, appropriately.

Because YA lit is so often first person, it's the voice that makes or breaks it for me. The affectless voice of Titus in *Feed *is beautifully rendered. I usually play the first chapter for my class before we begin reading and discussing the novel.

-- 
Fern Kory
Professor of English
Eastern Illinois University
emily nichols wrote:
Nation is the only one of the Odyssey books that I have had the pleasure of
hearing.  I absolutely loved it- Stephen Briggs' reading is versatile enough
to bring to life the orphaned boy Mau, the elderly medicine woman on his
island, the priggish and inexperienced Daphne and her domineering
grandmother.  And the warm, sad, thoughtful and hilarious narration.
Often listening to the book I would be laughing and tearful at the same time
(somewhat dangerous while driving).  I think it stays remarkably true to the
conventions of its world and the ages of its characters while turning some
of my conceptions of our 19th century on end.  Knowing that the author was
suffering from early onset Alzheimer's while he wrote it and that his friend
Briggs is the reader made it even more poignant for me, illuminating the
theme of loss that ran through the story.
Thanks for reading,
Emily Nichols
Head of Children's Services
Beverly Public Library
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Received on Sat 11 Apr 2009 05:03:20 PM CDT