Our latest audio book for the car was Andrew Clements's The Report Card, a popular choice. The boys had read it before, but A got to enjoy each twist for the first time. P's opinion: "The Report Card is great! It's my favorite book." This is probably because he's fairly unhappy with his school life right now, so he likes the idea of a kid challenging the structure of school itself.
I've read it before as well; I'm a big Clements fan in general. I like the way that intellectual gifts and maturity do not march hand in hand, which seems very true to life for me. My kids enjoyed the examples; Nora decides to disguise her gifts in kindergarten by pretending to be a cat, an act she figures will be fairly inconspicuous. Um, no. And the idea that children can control property taxes through their efforts in school warmed their little hearts.
A big complaint however was the troublesome long tracks. Since I was in the car a lot more than the kids, it would have been nice to be able to switch over to other CDs to listen to music while they were in school, but with tracks as long as nine or ten minutes it was hard to find good stopping places. Come on Random House -- get with the program and put in breaks every three or so minutes -- that's much easier to manage.
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