6 Totally Engrossing YA Audiobooks to Make a Long Commute Fly By
by Tom Burns
I love audiobooks. I can’t remember the last time I got into my car without my newest “must listen” book ready to go on my iPhone. And I’ve noticed, over the past few years, that most of my favorite titles are considered “young adult audiobooks.” There’s a YA renaissance going on in publishing at the moment and adults shouldn’t be afraid to keep their eyes on the “Teen” shelves at their local library, particularly when it comes to audiobooks.
If you’re a grown up who simply loves hearing engrossing stories — the kind that make a long commute just melt away — here are six young adult audiobooks that you simply shouldn’t miss.
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His Dark Materials Trilogy
Pullman’s brilliant fantasy novels — The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass — are some of the most ambitious audiobooks ever produced. They utilize a full cast of London stage actors in their retellings of young Lyra Belacqua’s voyages across multiple worlds, with Pullman himself providing the narration. It is a gloriously epic production that puts the movie version of The Golden Compass to shame.
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Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
The film adaptation of Jesse Andrews’s hilariously heartbreaking novel — about two teen outsiders who venture out of their comfort zone to make a film for a dying friend — was a big hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. But if you’re the type who always prefers the book to the movie, the audiobook offers a nice compromise — they got the cast of award-winning indie film to perform a full-cast reading of the novel. It’s a wonderful tribute to the original text.
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Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase
YA favorite Jonathan Stroud’s newest series feels almost tailor-made for fans of shows like “Buffy” and “Doctor Who”. The Screaming Staircase introduces us to Lucy Carlyle (brilliantly read by Miranda Raison), a remarkable young woman who joins an independent team of adolescent paranormal investigators, desperate to make their own way in a London that’s besieged by ghosts, poltergeists, and other undead perils.
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Eleanor & Park
Set in 1986, this unconventional love story between two high school misfits is equal parts John Green and John Hughes. It’s insightful, romantic, and painful in all the right ways. Rowell also adds another layer by making the book’s point-of-view alternate between the two main characters — a technique that the audiobook wonderfully runs with by having two different readers for the roles.
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The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman is not only a spectacular writer, but he also has a spectacular VOICE. The guy just really, really knows how to read out loud and he particularly shines in the reading of his Newbery-winning tale of a young orphan raised by ghosts in a cemetery. (It also features an awesome banjo version of “Danse Macabre” by Bela Fleck.) There are actually two different audio versions — one that’s all Gaiman and one full-cast reading with Gaiman only doing the narration.
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The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Bradley’s Flavia de Luce is one of the most original literary creations in years — a headstrong 11-year-old girl, obsessed with chemistry and poisons, who takes it upon herself to solve mysteries in 1950s England. Devotees of Hermione Granger or Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock will instantly fall in love with the gleefully morbid Flavia, particularly after hearing Jayne Entwistle bring her precocious analytic mind to life.
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