Audiobook facts for kids
Audiobooks or "talking books" are books that have been read aloud by someone and recorded. Nowadays, they are usually recorded onto compact discs (CDs), although some older editions remain on cassette tapes. (This is why many texts in this format were first called books-on-tape.) More recently, audiobooks have been available to download from the internet (free or paid-for) and pre-recorded on special MP3 players.
Audiobooks have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. They are also useful for the blind.
Many popular books are often chosen to be turned into audiobooks. The original author may or may not be involved in choosing the narrator for the reading. Some authors often use the same reader for many books, so that their audiobooks have a similar sound or style.
Images for kids
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Caption reads: "The phonograph at home reading out a novel." From Daily Graphic (New York), 2 April 1878. Less than a year after the invention of the phonograph, this drawing offered a future vision. Novels however would remain impractical for phonographs until the 1930s.
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Audiobook used to disseminate information among farmers in Kenya.
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Example of an audio studio for professional readings. The studio is surrounded in sound baffle panels to mitigate reverberation from the speaker, allowing the microphone to pick up clearer audio.
See also
In Spanish: Audiolibro para niños
