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 7/12 to 7/18) at the SYNC website. The twelfth week will start on Thursday, July 12th with How to Hang a Witch . The theme for the twelfth week is “Puritan madness.”
The author, a descendant of the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, reads her fictional first-person narrative based on her family history. Mather makes clear the unfriendly reception that 15-year-old Sam receives when she moves to Salem with her stepmother. For unknown reasons, she is the target of the “ancestors,” girls who are descended from the Salem witches. As narrator, Mather makes Sam’s discomfort palpable as she fears the girls’ hostility, worries about her father’s illness, and recoils from anything spooky. These troubles add to the painful history of unexplained accidents that have always plagued those she cares about. Mather moves easily between reality and the supernatural, excelling in her portrayal of a centuries-old ghost and scary villains. The audiobook includes an illuminating author’s note.
Narrator Donada Peters gives a sense of immediacy to this classic 1850s novel featuring Hester Prynne, an unmarried young mother who must wear an embroidered scarlet “A,” denoting her commission of adultery. Peters’s portrayals of the matrons who wait outside the jail for Hester’s appearance set the tone for 1642 Boston–a place of cruel judgments, whispery gossip, and occasional gentleness. Through strong character portrayals, Peters depicts the torment of preacher Arthur Dimmesdale, who has not admitted to fathering Hester’s child, and the agony of Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, who presents himself as a healer but, in truth, is vengeful and cruel. Throughout the story, Peters steadily illuminates Hester’s essential goodness. The library owns this title in book and eaudiobook formats.