Here is a post that shows how much time my family spends on the road! We drive around a lot, be it on vacations to Maine or New York or when we make our bi-weekly trips to my parents’ house. My mom watches our daughter every other Friday, which has my trio making the 1 hr journey east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, usually in rush hour traffic. To pass the time in a peaceful manner, we now have the ability to slip in a CD mix featuring some of our daughter’s all time favorite stories. This will often make her (and sometimes me) forget about the terribly heavy traffic and enjoy the drive.
We recently found out that all our favorite Dr. Seuss books are available as audio books on iTunes. All the best are there:
The Lorax, Horton Hears A Who, How The Grinch Store Christmas, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, and many more…
Before our road trip to Maine this past summer, we bought The Lorax and Horton Hears A Who, and burned them onto a disc together, as a surprise for our daughter when she woke up (we embarked on the journey in the middle of the night). She was and still is absolutely in love with listening to these stories, especially Horton, which is read perfectly by Dustin Hoffman. The audio books have enhanced her love of Dr. Seuss and the actual books themselves. She has become even more familiar and infatuated with the rhythm and the language of Dr. Seuss, thanks to the audio version of his classic tales.
We are not crazy about having the television on in the house. We do not like, among other things, the passive nature of that form of entertainment. And while listening is not as active an activity as reading, it does still force a child to use their imagination to picture what is taking place in the story, even more so than the book itself, since those have pictures (of course!) to assist in this department.
Next time you are on iTunes, search Dr. Seuss or visit the audiobook section (then click on Kids and Young Adults). This area is stocked with Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, C.S. Lewis, and many more childrens characters and authors. The Dr. Seuss books are sold separately, for $2.95 each. They are also available in bunches of nine for $12.95, which is a much better value. The books are read by a myriad of celebrities, in addition to Hoffman: Ted Danson, David Hyde Pierce, John Cleese, Billy Crystal, Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow.
Author Review – Dr. Seuss