Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or homeschooler, this audiobook list is perfect for road trips, classrooms, or just for fun at home.
- How to listen to audiobooks
- Individual audiobooks every child should listen to!
- The Giver
- Island of the Blue Dolphins
- See You in the Cosmos
- When the Sea Turned to Silver
- The Boy Who Grew Dragons
- Chocolate Factory Ghost
- Lulu the Broadway Mouse
- The Girl, the Cat, & the Navigator
- Flora and Ulysses
- Have sword, will travel
- The Cricket in Times Square
- How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
- Nuts to You
- Hello, Universe
- Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing
- Complete Audiobook Series that kids and adults will love
- The Boxcar Children Series
- Hank the Cowdog Series
- The Green Ember Series
- The Ramona Collection by Beverly Cleary
- The Henry Huggins Collection by Beverly Cleary
- Geronimo Stilton
- Flat Stanley Audio Collection
- The Best Audiobooks that also have a movie to watch after reading
- Princess Bride
- Mary Poppins
- Where the Red Fern Grows
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
- Little House in the Big Woods + Series
- Coco: A Story About Music, Shoes, and Family
- The Mouse and the Motorcycle + Series
- The Hobbit
- The Chronicles of Narnia
- Mr. Popper's Penguins
- A Wrinkle in Time
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
- Matilda
- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
- Because of Winn Dixie
- Charlotte's Web
- Collected Stories of Winnie The Pooh
- How to Train Your Dragon
- Aladdin
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
- The Adventures of Captain Underpants
- The BFG
- Holes
- Indian in the Cupboard
- Stuart Little
- Peter Pan
- Paddington Bear Series
- Harry Potter
- Moana
- Historical and Educational Audiobooks
- American Tall Tales
- Rush Revere Series
- Jean Fritz Histories
- Greathall Productions with Jim Weiss
- The Magic Treehouse Series
- More Resources
How to listen to audiobooks
Where to find audiobooks for your family or classroom
Some, but not all of the links below are affiliate links. Tis means we may earn from qualifying purchases.
- Amazon – try a free 30-day trial on Audible
- ThriftBooks.com
- Hoopla – we get a few free from our local library + we have a plan for fifty per month
- Overdrive – we also get some free books via our library
- Your Local Library – a bit redundant here, but maybe yours has other options.
- eBay – a great place to buy playaways and CDs
Which format of audiobook is best?
This obviously depends on your needs. Our van, for instance only has a CD player. But it does have a 6 disc changer which means we can load all 6 CDs of the Boxcar Children and never have to wait or reload. That’s awesome.
Digital audiobooks have obviously become very popular because of their immediate availability. The downside, however, is needing a device that will play them. With 4 young kids, this is less than ideals because we don’t want them to have access to all the other things that kindles, iPads, and electronic devices can offer… even if there are parental controls.
The most versatile and our favorite though? Playaway audiobooks.
They can go with us anywhere, including just in the house. Instead of headphone, we bought a small speaker that plugs into the headphone jack and can be recharged after about 16 hours of listening time.
If you have an old-school CD player like a CD walkman, the speaker option is also a really nice tool you can use with those as well.
Individual audiobooks every child should listen to!
A few notes:
- This list has approximately 75 to 83 entries. While we don’t expect you to count them, in case you do we want to explain that we are not being deceptive with our title of 99+ books. The 99 books include titles that are a part of a series, but to save both our time and your time, we have simply added whole series as one entry. In fact, there are HUNDREDS of books if you include every book from every series.
- Please understand some books go in multiple categories, but we tried to split them up in a way that best suits them. For instance, some series are included in our books that have a major motion picture to watch after reading! Those included in this sub-list do not have movies or TV shows to accompany them
- If you have a great audiobook your whole family loved, please feel free to comment or contact us at checkmate@boardgamesforlearning.com so we can consider adding it to our list.
- All “Find on Amazon” buttons are affiliate links meaning we earn from qualifying purchases if you buy anything after clicking through from our site. They will appear at the end of the book description.
Complete Audiobook Series that kids and adults will love
We love to get completely engulfed in a good book series whether just for fun or on a family road trip. It’s the best way to make sure our family stays focused pursing literary interests instead of non-academic screen time. We will binge books for hours and days by getting an entire book series on CD or downloading every digital copy available.
Going on a family road trip? Check out this list of car games that don’t require any supplies!
The Best Audiobooks that also have a movie to watch after reading
Where the Red Fern Grows
Growing up in Oklahoma, this is a novel every student reads in elementary school. And I vividly remember my 2nd grade teacher reading it aloud to us. We haven’t gotten to it yet as a family, but am looking forward to it despite knowing that it’s a brilliant story it elicits some really emotional responses.
Little House in the Big Woods + Series
This is near the top of the list of favorites for our family because of the ability to really dive into both a long series of 9 books and also be able to be invested in watching the TV series streaming online. While we don’t love being plugged in all the time, it’s nice to have a solid and wholesome story to turn to when we do.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
We actually found a huge haul of these at our local thrift store. It’s such an easy series to get sucked into as a child because it crosses many ages, but especially the tween crowd. There’s a lot of humor and can be a fun series to use in a fifth grade classroom or with your older elementary kids on a road trip. And there are a LOT of books in the series!
Historical and Educational Audiobooks
Because we sometimes take our homeschool on the road or because we want to spice up something we’re learning about, these are fantastic educational audiobooks the whole family can truly enjoy.
Jean Fritz Histories
These are very cute stories, many from around the American Revolution and Constitutional periods and perfect for even the youngest audiences. They typically focus on a particular person like John Hancock or Sam Adams. They do focus on other time period though as well like the pilgrims at Plymouth Rock or explorations of Christopher Columbus. We’re currently listening to “Alexander Hamilton: The Outsider”.
The Magic Treehouse Series
We have an assortment of these audiobooks from CD to digital. They are such a perfect length for multiple ages. While they’re fiction, they usually have a great historic subject and while not on audiobook, there are Fact Finders for each topic to dig into more of the history or background of the stories!
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