Free Teen Audiobook Season Arrives
Teens and Tweens can download two wonderful audiobooks each week to build their personal libraries
During each week of the SYNC season, AudioFile Magazine makes two thematically related audiobooks available for free downloads to teens and tweens across the country. Thanks to OverDrive, these titles can be downloaded and kept forever by individuals. This is our effort to support teen literacy through the opportunity to build a personal audiobook shelf for future listening and relistening.
The full list of 2019 SYNC titles includes contemporary fiction, non-fiction, and historical works. Check them out and set your calendar reminder for each week!
Why a pair of audiobook titles? Pairing titles means that we can provide:
- Listening options for multiple listening capacities
- Models for comparing and contrasting literary works with shared attributes
- Experiences with diverse performance styles
- Possibilities for switching away if one title isn’t enjoyable
We’ve heard from educators involved in leading professional development workshops that they suggest participants engage in SYNC to build up their awareness of the breadth and depth of both books and performance experiences available to the teens they are coaching and advising.
When this annual program started ten years ago, the idea was to match pairs of weekly titles so each pair provided something new to teen publishing and a “classic” assigned in many schools. School assignments have changed a lot in the past decade and so have our pairs. Now we strive to provide weekly pairs of high-interest titles for teens (middle and high school, as well as those out of school) that offer a combination of entertainment and critical thinking and knowledge opportunities. Yes, some of the audiobooks reflect texts assigned in some schools. However, each pair definitely includes at least one (and often two!) audiobooks that invite discussion and deeper consideration than just passing entertainment alone.
This season, eight of the audiobooks reflect the #OwnVoices movement, adding the dimension of narrator or narrators to the voice of the author as authentically reflecting experiences and values of people other than the traditionally Eurocentric.
In addition, three of the audiobooks this season offer listeners staged dramas to give teens genuine samplings of how theatrical storytelling differs from prose narrative. Among the remaining 17 titles, there are a collection of short stories, a work discussing a political speech given several decades ago, narrative nonfiction on a popular science topic, and some biographical titles.
Performance styles also vary: listeners can experience single narrator readings, dramatic performances of novels by full casts, and author-read works. Some titles are very short (under three hours) and a few top 10 hours apiece.
SYNC strives to offer a wide enough variety that everyone can find something to love and everyone can take the opportunity to discover something unexpected or previously unfamiliar.
