10 Audiobooks for 4 +

If I were the Principal, boy, things would change.
Our school would be fun, if a little bit strange.
We’d keep kangaroos in the classrooms as pets.
We’d travel to Tonga and learn to fly jets.

We’d get to make movies, and all become stars.
For field trips we’d blast off on rockets to Mars.
We’d learn to raise monsters and build time machines.
We’d surf on tsunamis in sleek submarines.

We’d learn to make robots with nuclear brains,
and dig up a dinosaur’s fossil remains.
We’d battle with pirates and plunder their gold.
We’d duel with dragons for treasures untold.

We’d practice some potions and magical spells
to stink up the schoolyard with sickening smells,
to make us invisible, eighty feet tall,
or turn into liquid or walk through a wall.

Yes, if I were Principal, that’s what we’d do.
We’d lock evil scientists up in the zoo,
while vanquishing villains and capturing crooks.
In other words, we would read many more books.

— Kenn Nesbitt

I hope you read the last line of this poem, and chuckled. I certainly did earlier this week when my boy (9) said he was going to learn this for a class poetry competition. He is an avid reader so this poem struck a deep cord with him. One day he’s exploring mountains with the Hobbit, the next he’ll be travelling with Long John Silver in search of gold. And what a gift this adventuring is particularly in these Covid times, when many of us across the world are learning to appreciate our local environs for months at a time.

One way of bringing stories into the home is listening to audiobooks, whether for the whole family together or individually. At the moment, my 6 year old is listening to one most days and so I’ve popped a list of 10 that she has listened to recently. Some of these she has listened to over and over, others have sequels. Hopefully you’ll find something below that might take your child to Tonga or Mars.