Back in May I went to the bookstore to buy a gift for my soon-to-be-born niece. While I was there I spotted a charming picture book, Water in the Park, about a park in the big city and all the water-related things that happen there on a hot summer day. It was so well-written and had such lovely illustrations, the kind that have lots of interesting details to examine, that I just had to buy it for someone!
I have a couple of little cousins who live in NYC, and I thought the book would be perfect for them. I planned to send it to the older one for her 4th birthday in July, but time got away from me, what with all the crazy things happening in my life…
I finally mailed it off a couple of days ago, but first I recorded it so that little Ginny and Jo can listen to me read it to them at any time :)
It’s probably not super-interesting without the pictures to look at while you listen, but maybe you have a copy of your own, or can buy it or get it from the library, so here’s my recording:
UPDATE! (June 17, 2014) A commenter has just let me know that you can now purchase an ebook of “Poo-Poo and the Dragons” with the original illustrations! So if you enjoyed my recording, please support this publisher and buy your own copy of this wonderful classic.
I just recorded and uploaded the last chapter of Poo-Poo and the Dragons! I’ll be podcasting about 2 chapters a week, but you can download the whole book right now if you’re impatient. Visit my “Kayray Reads to You” page.
I wish you could see all of the illustrations, but here are two:
And yes, NOW I will get back to work on Spiderweb for Two :)
I’ve been getting a lot of email asking, very politely, when I will record the last book in the Melendy Quartet, “Spiderweb for Two” :)
I’m so glad you guys are eager to hear it! I recorded the first chapter a while back, and then real life happened for a while, and then I got distracted by Poo-Poo and the Dragons, which I had to check out from the library because it is too expensive to purchase my own copy. So now I need to finish the last few chapters of Poo-Poo, and then I’ll go back to recording Spiderweb so you can hear about the interesting things that happened to Randy and Oliver while Mark, Mona, and Rush were away at boarding school…
UPDATE! (June 17, 2014) A commenter has just let me know that you can now purchase an ebook of “Poo-Poo and the Dragons” with the original illustrations! So if you enjoyed my recording, please support this publisher and buy your own copy of this wonderful classic.
http://enetpress.com/books/Poo_Poo_and_the_Dragons.html
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Have I got a treat for you! Chapter 1 of “Poo-Poo and the Dragons” by C. S. Forester (yes, the guy who wrote the Horatio Hornblower books).
I’ve recorded 11 of 17 chapters but I have added the finished chapters to my podcast feed already. I’ll get the whole book done soon because I have to get it finished before the library wants it back. I don’t have my own copy because it’s out of print and used copies are rare and expensive. If you have a copy, hang on to it! The illustrations are by Robert Lawson. You would recognize his style — he illustrated Ferdinand!
I hope you like the adventures of Harold Heavyside Brown (a.k.a. Poo-Poo) and his dragons!
If you enjoy listening to librivox audiobooks, would you please consider making a donation to help us with our infrastructure costs? Any donation will be helpful, large or small. And because we are under the wing of the wonderful Internet Archive, your donation will be tax deductible!
We have rebuilt all the software that runs our project management systems, our cataloging system, and our book uploading systems; in addition, we’ve done a complete redesign & implementation of our website. All this will be revealed to the public shortly… but there is more work to do.
We’d like your help to raise money to support the following things:
* technical infrastructure additions that were outside the scope of what we could achieve with the Mellon grant
* ongoing system administration costs
* ongoing development support and improvements on our new software systems
* ensuring the LibriVox site is properly internationalized
* to make sure that volunteers don’t need to pay out of pocket for big-ticket items that need paying for
Our 8-year anniversary is coming up, on August 10, 2013.
Our target is to raise $50,000 by then. Can you help?
Another old favorite picture book. Try to find a copy of this one so you can see the beautiful woodcut illustrations! I don’t understand why it’s out of print. Sigh.
Dan and I are visiting my sister, her husband, and their newborn daughter! Little Emma Rose is a dear sweet wonderful baby.
Looking through their books, I was delighted to find lots of childhood treasures that I thought had been given away years ago! One of them, Aldar the Trickster, was a huge favorite of mine when I was little. I can’t tell you how happy I was to see it again. I recorded it this morning using iTalk on my iPhone.
One of my favorite picture books when I was very little was Richard Scarry’s “Busy Busy World” (first half of the hardback “Going Places). I know my little not-yet-born niece won’t be ready for it for a couple of years, but I recorded it for her anyway, and YOU get to listen to it too! I really hope you can buy or borrow the real book, ’cause the pictures are half the fun. Of course it’s out of print and VERY pricy used on Amazon. Sigh.
Which stories are your favorites? :) I’m very fond of Glip and Glop, the Greek Painters; Schtoompah, the Funny Austrian; Schmudge, the German Chimney Sweep; Mario, the Venetian Gondolier; and Hans, the Dutch Plumber. Oh and Dr Krunchchew the Russian Dentist!
I’ve just updated my “Kayray Reads to You” page to include The Grey King, Bagthorpes Abroad, The Sweet Smell of Christmas, and The Adventures of Little Bear. As always, if you like these stories please buy copies of the actual books.
I’m almost finished recording the third Melendy family book — Then There Were Five. Just one more chapter to go, so check back soon! I might even finish this afternoon.
Also yesterday I knitted a cunning little iPhone pouch to hang around my neck when I wear stupid pocketless girl-pants. :)
What most of you are wondering is — am I recording anything for you? And the answer is yes! I’m just finishing up Elizabeth Enright’s “Then There Were Five” for the “Kayray Reads to You” podcast, and I’m also working on “Just William” for LibriVox.
I finished this big warm sweater back in November and wore it all winter, but then I decided it needed a shawl collar and pockets, so I ripped off the button band and reknit it, and added lovely big patch pockets.
Also, when I was looking for something one day, I found a set of four vintage linen napkins with cutwork designs stamped on them that I bought from ebay 8 years ago and never finished! So I’ve finished them. They make wonderful hankies.
A couple weeks ago a listener (Heather) suggested that I record a solo version of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” so I did that :) Aravis was my MC and Proof-Listener extraordinaire. She did ALL the tedious LibriVox tasks and let me do just the fun part — recording!
As usual, reading the story aloud made me notice things I hadn’t before. Did you ever realize that Scrooge’s nephew’s wife is pregnant? See if you can sniff out the delicate Victorian hints.
Hand-colored engraving of The Ghost of Christmas Present. This makes handsome album art!
Someone asked in a comment how to find my recording of the Sherlock Holmes story, “The Red-Headed League”. I link to my solos (and duets) on the “Librivox Recordings” page here on my blog, but if you want to see a list of all the individual chapters and poems I’ve ever recorded for LibriVox, go here:
I started this as a duet with Annie in 2008. She drifted away from Librivox before we finished and the project lay dormant until I asked Laurie Anne if she’d finish it with me. It took us about a year but we did it! I read the even chapters and then when I got to the end I worked backwards for a while, so the end of the book is just me. So — three different readers but all excellent (if I say so myself) and most of volume 3 is just me.
I’m so happy this is finished because I’ve been wanting a new book for my all-night audiobook playlist but I have strict requirements: it must be a book I already know really well, and it must be read by me or a reader with a similar style.
Many thanks to Aravis for proof-listening and cataloging!
Whoops, while listening to The Fellowship I found that the end of chapter 7 was missing. Dunno what happened there. So I re-recorded the ending and uploaded the file again. Sorry about that!
The truncated file is about 29 minutes long. The fixed file is about 32 minutes long.
I just found some very old recordings to share — The Hobbit and book 1 of The Fellowship of the Ring! I must have recorded these when Henry was seven or so. The Fellowship was first and it’s actually my second recording of the book.
When Henry became obsessed with Tolkien at age six I recorded the whole Fellowship (and The Two Towers, I think) onto cassette tapes which then wore out with daily listening, so when Dan gave me my first iBook with a built-in mic I re-recorded The Fellowship digitally. After we did book 1 we decided to do The Hobbit, and I guess after that we branched out to other authors and never got around to book 2. But don’t worry — I want to hear it so I’ll record it soon! Recording quality will be much higher but there won’t be a little person asking questions and reading the poems :)
It’s a collection of children’s stories and rhymes, and includes:
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
The Old Woman and her Pig by Sara Cone Bryant
The House that Jack Built by Randolph Caldecott
Mother Goose by Eulalie Osgood Grover
The Old Man’s Bag by T. W. H. Crosland
Struwwelpeter: Merry Stories and Funny Pictures by Heinrich Hoffmann
Johnny Crow’s Garden by L. Leslie Brooke
Johnny Crow’s Party by L. Leslie Brooke
Book About Animals by Rufus Merrill
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore
The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Androcles and the Lion by Joseph Jacobs
The Master Cat, or Puss In Boots by Charles Perrault
The Little Red Hen by Florence White Williams
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
The Slant Book by Peter Newell
The Rocket Book by Peter Newell
and
The Mythological Zoo by Oliver Herford
They’re almost all picture books (except for a few that are chapters from larger books) and you can find them online at Project Gutenberg if you want to look at the pictures.
Thanks for proof-listening and cataloging, Elli! :)
My LibriVox and “Kayray reads to you” links will not work tomorrow, January 18th. Our file host, The Internet Archive, will be holding a black-out to protest the internet censorship bills SOPA/PIPA:
The Internet Archive believes that it is critical to protest and raise awareness of pending legislation in the United States: House Bill 3261, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and S.968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).
Archive.org is going dark from 6:00 am – 6:00 pm PDT on Wednesday January 18 (14:00 – 02:00 GMT) to drive a message to Washington. We need your help to do this.
Legislation such as this directly affects libraries (pdf) such as the Internet Archive, which collects, preserves, and offers access to cultural materials. Furthermore, these laws can negatively affect the ecosystem of web publishing that led to the emergence of the Internet Archive.
These bills would encourage the development of blacklists to censor sites with little recourse or due process. The Internet Archive is already blacklisted in China—let’s prevent the United States from establishing its own blacklist system.
For United States residents, please take action.
For non-US residents: Sorry for dragging you into this, and if you are willing, sign a petition to the State Department to express your concern.
Here is the Congressional Switchboard Telephone Number:
1-866-220-0044
Be sure you have your ten-digit zip code so the switchboard can direct your call to the correct congressperson who represents you. You can find your ten-digit zip code on any piece of junk mail that reaches your home.
