Books on CD

I've been gone the last week on "vacation" (I honestly need a real vacation after a family vacation!), but still managed to fit in a little literature. When we have a long drive, we try to borrow a few books on CD from the library to keep everyone quiet. This time we listened to Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce on the way up and Sammy Keyes and the Runaway Elf by Wendelin Van Draanen on the way back.

Kelly was excited to listen to Framed--a story about a 9-year old boy in a small town with a big secret that might involve him in the crime of the century--but quickly changed her mind about 10 minutes into the story. The CD case did not tell us that the small town was in Wales and that the man performing the story would have a thick British accent that was nearly impossible to decipher. The story was written for ages 8-14; Kelly couldn't follow it, the older kids liked it, and David & I loved it! The story of how the English National Gallery stored a collection of valuable paintings in a mine near this small town and how the town was changed by it was very interesting, but it was listening to all the colloquialisms and the different pronunciations that was so fascinating. Examples: instead of saying that people were running around in the nude, he said they were running around in the "nuddie." Instead of going to a swap meet, they went to a "car boot sale." I don't know if the story would be as entertaining written as it was spoken, but we laughed often and very much enjoyed it.

The Sammy Keyes book was one of a series of books that none of us had ever read before. The interest level for the story was listed at ages 10-13, and that was about right because it was our 10-year-old and 13-year-old who enjoyed the story most. Sammy Keyes is a junior detective who is a step above most. The story was a little more complicated and a little less predictable than most detective stories written for this age group. While I was not terribly interested in the story line, a rich lady's dog being stolen and a little girl who continually runs away from home, I thought that Sammy had great personality, and I enjoyed her determination to solve the problem in the end. The actress did a great job with the first-person story. It was not great literature, but it was well done for the genre. I wouldn't be surprised if Erin read another one in the series, but Brian probably wouldn't because it was a "girl book."