Jim Dale set a Guinness World Record for performing 146 distinct character voices in a single audiobook recording. Queen Elizabeth named him a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his work in promoting children’s English literature. He is the first inductee into the American Audio Hall of Fame.
The greatest narrators of our lifetime have read the greatest children’s books of the last hundred years, and most parents do not know it. The recordings are not hard to find. Many are free with a library card. Summer is almost here, the screens are everywhere, and there is no better antidote to a phone in a child’s hand than three hours of Sir Michael Hordern reading The Wind in the Willows on a long drive.
This is part one of a three-part series.
Thirty children’s audiobooks, the most decorated narrators in the English-speaking world, every book a classic. The list is built around what kids will actually love, what families can listen to together, and what will hold up on a long road trip without anyone reaching for a phone.
If I have missed something you and your kids have loved, drop it in the comments. I am keeping a running list, and the reader favorites post is coming after part three.
1. Harry Potter, narrated by Jim Dale
I am breaking my own rule about pre-1989 books for one reason. Jim Dale’s narration of these books is the gold standard against which every audiobook on earth is now measured. Two Grammy Awards. Ten Audie Awards. Queen Elizabeth named him a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2003 for his work in promoting children’s English literature. He is the first inductee into the American Audio Hall of Fame.
If your kids only ever listen to one audiobook, listen to him reading these.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the print set
2. The Chronicles of Narnia, narrated by Kenneth Branagh, Patrick Stewart, Michael York, Lynn Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam, and Alex Jennings
This is not an audiobook. It is a cathedral. Each of the seven books is read by a different legendary actor. Kenneth Branagh is one of the great Shakespeareans of our time. Patrick Stewart is a Royal Shakespeare Company titan. Derek Jacobi is a knight of the realm and one of the finest classical actors England has ever produced. Lynn Redgrave earned two Oscar nominations and two Tony nominations across her career. C.S. Lewis wrote these books to be read aloud, and this cast honors that intention completely.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the boxed set
3. The Ramona Quimby Audio Collection, narrated by Stockard Channing
Stockard Channing is a Tony winner, a three-time Emmy winner, and a Drama Desk winner. She played Rizzo. She played the First Lady on The West Wing. And somehow she sounds exactly like the inside of a four-year-old girl’s head. Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books are the closest thing American literature has to a perfect record of what it actually feels like to be a little kid in a normal family on a normal street trying to figure out how the world works. Channing reads all eight in a single nineteen-hour collection.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the print set
4. The Hobbit, narrated by Rob Inglis
Rob Inglis was an Australian-British stage actor who spent decades doing one-man Tolkien adaptations on stage before Recorded Books asked him to perform the unabridged audiobook. His Hobbit was the only commercially available unabridged recording for almost thirty years. He sings every song in the book. He gives Gollum a voice that will haunt your kids for a week in the best possible way. AudioFile Magazine called it a masterpiece.
Start your family on this one before the trilogy that follows.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the book
5. The Lord of the Rings, narrated by Rob Inglis
Once The Hobbit hooks them, the trilogy waits. Over fifty hours of listening. One of the great works of the twentieth century. Inglis sings the elvish songs, gives Treebeard the voice he was always meant to have, and reads it the way a beloved uncle reads a long story to a child finally old enough to hear it.
Save this for the road trip you have always meant to take.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the trilogy
6. Charlotte’s Web, narrated by E.B. White
E.B. White recorded this in 1970, and it is the only audiobook I know of where the author’s own voice is also the perfect voice for the book. He has a New England twang. He sounds like a man who actually owned a barn and actually knew a pig. AudioFile gave the recording an Earphones Award.
There is also a wonderful Meryl Streep full-cast version if you want a second listen later in the summer. Start with White.
🎧 Listen on Audible (E.B. White)
📖 Buy the book
7. The Wind in the Willows, narrated by Sir Michael Hordern
Sir Michael Hordern was a Knight Bachelor, a four-time BAFTA winner, and one of the most respected character actors of the British twentieth century. He was Gandalf in the original 1981 BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. His Wind in the Willows is widely considered the definitive recording. He gives Mole his sweetness, Ratty his charm, Badger his gruff wisdom, and Toad the most magnificent ridiculous voice in the history of audio.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the book
8. The Little House Series, narrated by Cherry Jones
Cherry Jones won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play twice, for The Heiress and Doubt. She is a working titan of the American stage. Her recording of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books, with Pa’s fiddle music played by Paul Woodiel between chapters, is one of the most beloved family audio productions ever made.
If you give your kids one summer with Cherry Jones reading Little House in the Big Woods, Farmer Boy, Little House on the Prairie, On the Banks of Plum Creek, By the Shores of Silver Lake, The Long Winter, and Little Town on the Prairie, you will have given them a foundation in American history, frontier virtue, and family life that nothing else on the market can touch.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the print set
9. Anne of Green Gables, narrated by Rachel McAdams
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 classic, read by an Oscar-nominated Canadian actress who clearly grew up loving these books. AudioFile gave the recording an Earphones Award and praised her delivery as light and breathy and ever so eloquent.
For girls especially, this is one of the most important characters in the canon. Anne is a hero of imagination, of grit, of loyalty, of self-respect.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the book
10. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, narrated by Elijah Wood
Elijah Wood was Frodo. He has been a working actor since he was a small boy. His reading of Mark Twain’s 1884 American masterpiece earned an AudioFile Earphones Award. The novel is what Hemingway called the source of all modern American literature, and Wood’s voice has the right combination of boy and witness.
If your kids are old enough for it, this is the great American novel for young readers.
🎧 Listen on Audible
📖 Buy the book
Part Two arrives next week.
If I missed an audiobook your family has loved, drop it in the comments. I am keeping a running list and the reader favorites post is coming after part three.
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Get the books on the shelf. Press play on the drive.
— Natalya
My children spent their days listening to audio books! The article brings back lovely memories of these times. "Cheaper by the Dozen" by Frank Gilbreth was a favorite!
My absolute favorite is Jack Nicholson reading Kipling’s Just so Stories with terrific accompanying from the jazz master, Bobby McFerrin