This summer, SYNC will be providing two free teen audiobooks each week from April 26th to July 25th. Each week will focus on a specific theme, pairing a classic YA title with a more modern YA title. These two titles will be available to download for free this week only (from 5/10 to 5/16) at the SYNC website. The third week will start on Thursday, May 10th with Johnny Get Your Gun . The theme for the third week is “on the run.”
A family struggling to make ends meet has their lives torn apart when their 9-year-old son, Johnny, decides to retaliate against a school bully. Dion Graham is up to the challenge of narrating this well-done story, set in the 1960s in California. Graham has to shift between various characters, including the boy and his parents, Tennessee transplants. He gives African-American detective Virgil Tibbs a stoic, commanding voice. The author elicits a fair amount of empathy from the listener by revealing multiple perspectives of the story, and Graham’s narration makes fine use of consistent, creative voices for everyone involved.
This is not an autobiographical look at an entire life; rather, it spans just a few months as the author approached his 10th birthday, as he prepared to emigrate from Iran. Kazerooni does an admirable job narrating his own work, lending a variety of voices to the people who come in and out of his life at this pivotal time. A kindly hotel owner has a tired, accented voice—perfect for listeners to imagine a man hunched at his front desk night after night. Fear, lack of confidence, frustration, and a sense of achievement—all the emotions that come with being a kid on his own—come out in full force in this well-done audiobook. The library owns this in book format.