DIY Audiobooks: A Perfect Gift for Little Book Lovers
My in-laws are really good gift givers.
I feel like every year, they give us interesting and unique things that we use and enjoy.
One of my favorite gifts they gave us one year was a set of DIY audiobooks.
As you can imagine, they’ve been used over and over for the last many years.
This Christmas version was actually a gift before my children were even born, back in 2006.
The book A Creature was Stirring: One Boy’s Night Before Christmas is a really fun holiday book which contrasts the original Clement Clarke Moore poem with a another poem about a little boy who IS stirring.
As the original poem unfolds stanza by stanza on the left-hand page, the little boy’s poem, where he creeps out of bed, sneaks up on to the roof and takes Santa’s sleigh for a spin, is carried out on the right hand pages.
My mother-in-law read the original poem and my brother-in-law, who was pretty young at the time, read the little boy’s part.
They recorded it on a CD and slipped it in a CD pocket in the back of the book so that it was easy to keep track of.
As you can imagine, this is a family treasure.
My girls love listening to their grandma (who currently lives in Europe) and uncle read them a Christmas story, and I love that they can listen even when I’m not available to read to them.
This gift was such a hit with the grandchildren that a few years later, they did another set, this time with a bunch of classic children’s books, including The Story of Ferdinand, among others.
This time, my brother-in-law read them all, and they sent along one CD with all the audio tracks and then physical copies of each book so the grandchildren could follow along.
Ella was about two, I think, when they did this, and for YEARS we kept that CD in the car along with the paperback books and we listened to them hundreds and hundreds of times.
I think it’s the BEST gift idea for children, especially if you live far away from family.
When I mentioned it on Instagram Stories a few weeks ago, several people responded saying that they had done it for their nieces or nephews or that they had similar audio recordings of their grandparents from their own childhoods and still could recite pretty much every word of the books.
diy audiobook
You could make an audio CD or you could easily just record a voice memo on your phone and play them on your phone or through your car bluetooth. One commenter mentioned that she had her parents record them as voice memos and then send the memos along and she burned them all onto a CD.
No matter how you do it, it’s such a sweet gift that you’ll probably treasure forever.
I love the idea of doing it for my own children so that they can listen to me read aloud to them at bedtime on their CD players or during quiet time.
And if you need some ideas for books that would make perfect DIY audiobooks, these are nine that lend themselves well to being read aloud:
- Corduroy by Don Freeman
- Snippy and Snappy by Wanda Gag
- Penny and Her Song by Kevin Henkes
- Alma and How She Got Her Name by Juana Martinez-Neal
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
- I Really Like Slop! by Mo Willems
- Amos & Boris by William Steig
- Steam Train, Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker
- The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
Happy listening!
Photos by Christie Knight Photography
What an amazing gift idea! My in-laws live pretty far away, and I’ll bet my boys would love to hear their Grandma Jan and Grandpa Chuck read them a story. Too bad they’re so technologically challenged, I doubt we could ever get this coordinated! Oh well. :/
We should do this again for my boys this year and I just thought of having the grandparents, or who ever, record a little intro, too. Just like a hello and we love you. My oldest is in kindergarten and I’m thinking of having him read a little Christmas book and sending it back to the grandparents. They’d probably love hearing his little voice reading even more than he loves heading theirs!
What a genius idea!!! I loved it! We’re the only ones in the US (my family’s all in Brazil) and this year, both my sister and my best friend had babies. I now have a nephew and a niece in Rio de Janeiro. This will be the PERFECT Christmas gift for me to give them through the years, so that they’ll be familiar with my voice. Loved it!!!
Thinking about doing this. One question. Is there a chime when the page should be turned?
They didn’t on our copies, but you could certainly do one!
Oh my goodness, I’ve actually been making several audiobooks for the past couple weeks! I saw previous posts on here using the CDs and thought it was such inspiration. I’m going the digital route and have been uploading them to the Alilo Bunny for my 3-year-old and the Wiwoo MP3 player for my 5-year-old niece. So far they work really well (knock on wood). It’s been so fun – even my older daughter has been helping to read some of the stories (we use Voice Memos on my phone). Such a neat project; thank you. 🙂
I bought Christmas pez for my kids a few years ago. We save them all year and Santa puts them with refills in stockings. We always put a book in or near the stocking. That’s the only gift they can ask Santa for. A few years ago I found fun loofahs with animals in them. I’ve never seen them again but they were a hit
So I am fairly tech savvy but need good instructions to do this. What did you use to record and transfer to CD.