From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2009 22:45:27 -0500

*I appreciate all that Sylvia, Pam and Teri have shared about being a member of an Odyssey Award Committee. It's never occurred to me to wonder about the criteria for audiobook narration, and I haven't heard of Critical Listening before. Obviously I haven't been paying attention to audiobook reviews in professional journals. Pam wrote that "Normally you'd skim right over these mistakes as your brain has figured out what should be there based on the context of the story, but critical listening enables you to hear the breathing, pages being turned, and the misconnects between 'he replied icily,' and the narrator speaking normally." Wow, it's hard to believe that audiobooks that poorly produced would be out there for sale. This underscores the importance of formal recognition for outstanding audiobook production.

I'm also amazed at the number of hours committee members spend while doing preliminary listening and critical listening. I realize that those of us who volunteer to be on book award committees also tally a more or less similar number of reading hours, and we have to find the time and place to do all the reading. This made me think that perhaps everyone on this committee has a long commute during which to do much of the preliminary listening. It also made me realize that I've been incredibly fortunate in my somewhat random selection of public library audiobooks for adults to hear during long car trips. I don't recall hearing pages being turned, breathing or confusing "misconnects." Maybe I'll become a more critical listener this summer while I'm on the road!

Best, Ginny

*

*-- * Ginny Moore Kruse

Emerita Director Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) gmkruse at wisc.edu phone: 608.238.9225
Received on Sun 12 Apr 2009 10:45:27 PM CDT