For me, summer means road trips to and from class in Ann Arbor, the cottage, and home.  And that means getting a head start on back-to-school reading with audio books!

Are you ready for the July 1 - September 1 free audio book project as part of Sync? Click the link below to learn more!

YALSA » Summer listening freebies from Sync via kwout

Mary Burkey has posted this very exciting information to the YALSA blog and elsewhere about a free summer listening project.  What a great way to extend resources to folks if your library doors are shuttered this summer! Each week pairs a newer title with a classic title. 

For example, the project kicks off on July 1 with the tag-team of James Patterson’s Angel Experiment with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Still unknown … what classic will be paired with Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games?

(Please, please, consider listening to this one while safely seated at home if you haven’t read this one before. I’m worried that the hair-raising plot will startle drivers and make them plow into telephone poles!)

You will need to join a Ning group for this, but that’s pretty painless, especially if you are already a member of another Ning (like Teacher-Librarian Ning).

Click through to the post below to find lots of PR materials, Website copy, and more!

(I’ll schedule a night-before-launch blog post to remind us all so we don’t miss out!)

YALSA » Psyched about Sync: Free Audiobooks! via kwout

I think so, and so does Neil Gaiman, who took the mic at NPR last month and filed a story on audio books, featuring audio book emperors David Sedaris and Martin Jarvis, no less.

Listen to it here (and, for fun, read the text transcript at the same time to see where NPR made edits).

Our students love audio.  While I initially purchased Audible.com subscriptions and iPod Shuffles with an eye on our special education students, they are wildly popular with all students.  I don’t mandate that they also check out the book; I leave it to the students to decide.  I figure that if I really want to develop passionate readers, I’ve got to make room for those who might not read if it required sitting down with the book in one’s hands but who might consider it if they could do their chores and rake the leaves while reading.

I’d love to hear from you.  How are you using audio books in your school? Can students “just listen”? Do they (or must they) follow along with the text? Do kids listen to audio books for pleasure, or merely to keep pace with classroom reading assignments?