Article about the benefits of listening on literacy

A Scripts Howard article is making the rounds this week with some good info on listening and literacy.  Some highlights:

Has your child listened to a good book lately?

Listening to books — on CD, cassette or downloaded into an MP3 player — not only is fun but also can help kids develop vocabulary and improve their reading fluency, because they can listen to more difficult books than they can read in printed form.

Listening to books is particularly helpful for children whose native language isn’t English or who have reading challenges. And it’s also a great way to spark the interest of reluctant readers, reading experts say.

Source

New audio: Biographies, classics, YA, and popular kids’ titles

We have a big collection of new digital audio, so we’ll dive right in. This week, I’ll group titles by their respective age ranges.

New audio: Catch-22, Junie B. Jones, Magic Tree House, and others

Each week, Audible adds to its catalog of children’s content. Since it can be a little difficult to hear about great new titles, each week, I’m going to post a “great listens” tour of our new and notable releases. This week, we’re adding to some series, and (finally) we’ve gotten the Joseph Heller classic. After the jump, check out the list (some with a bit of commentary).

“Listen with Your Kids Month” Continues: Maguire and Pooh downloads

The inaugural NEA/Audible “Listen with You Kids Month” continues.  You can still get the free download of Random House/Listening Library’s “List to the List”, audio excerpts from Newbery Award-winners.  Additionally, we’ve got a couple of great selections through to the end of the month.

Tomorrow we’re going to put up “Goldifox and the Three Chickens”. This is one of the “fractured fairy tales” from Gregory Maguire’s Leaping Beauty. Maguire is the author of Wicked, and this collection of off-beat takes on traditional fairy tales is fast becoming a classic.

On Tuesday, 3/27, we’ll put up our finale:  “In Which Pooh Goes Visiting and Gets into a Tight Place”.  This story is from the first volume of Winnie-the-Pooh: A.A. Milne’s Pooh Classics.

Also, last week we added an information page about listening with your kids.  It has recommendations for ways to listen with your child, as well as some literacy research information on the benefits of audio in developing literacy skills.  You can find it from the LWYK homepage (link below) or you can click through directly here.

So stop by and pick up these great free downloads and spend some time listening with your kids.  (And spread the word to any parents or teachers that might be interested!)

 http://www.audible.com/listenwithyourkids/

Audible and the NEA: “Listen with Your Kids Month”

You know Read Across America, right? The National Education Association the month-long program is in its tenth year, and this year it has something extra. Well, this year, it’s a little more special. Audible and the NEA have teamed up to bring “Listen with Your Kids” month. Audible will be providing great free audiobooks for download each week this month, and the NEA, along with other partners, will be bringing the message of spoken word audio to their audience.

This past week, we feature Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are.

Act fast, though, because we’re going to swap this audiobook out with a new one tomorrow. Tomorrow’s audio selection will feature spoken word excerpts of numerous Newbery Award winners as well as an interactive portion in “quiz show” style. Librarians we’ve spoken with tell us that kids really enjoy this series from Random House’s Listening Library, and we hope you’ll like it too.

You can visit Audible’s Listen with Your Kids Month site for updates here:

http://www.audible.com/listenwithyourkids

Check in on the page throughout the month for new information and more free downloads. Later this week, we’ll also be introducing a page of information on listening with your kids. It will include some research-based information on the benefits of audio, parent testimonials, and ideas on the best ways to share a listening moment with your child.

As always, post your comments and let us let us know what you think about this program,