INSTANT SURVIVAL TIP: Nearly FREE Audiobooks!

Our family loves listening to audiobooks.  We’ve enjoyed The Sign of the Beaver, Peter Pan, and many others as we drive around town or on cross-country trips.  They are a true sanity saver, and if you record your own, the only expense is the cost of blank, recordable CDs.

You have several options when it comes to audiobooks.

First, find out if your library participates in a free audiobooks program via OverDrive.com.  You can search for your local library here.  You’ll have access to thousands of audiobooks, many of which can be recorded onto CDs or stored on a wide variety of electronic devices.  Download their free software via your libarary’s website, select your audiobooks, and you’re good to go!  If you’re planning on burning CDs, be sure to select titles that give you permission to do so.  Not all come with that permission.

Another second option for some great audiobook listening is LibriVox.  LibriVox provides digital recordings of a multitude of books in the public domain.  You can register for their podcast, download zip files of their recorded books, or subscribe to a title via iTunes.  I browsed through their catalog and a few family-friendly titles that caught my eye were Little Women, various Jules Verne titles, and Call of the Wild.  You’ll find dozens of well-loved classics that every child should be familiar with and which so few public schools require anymore.

Be sure to label your recorded CDs since you will probably burn more than one CD per book.  A CD Storage Box with sleeves, like this one from Amazon, would be a good way to store your audiobooks.

In an emergency situation where your family may be away from home in an evacuation, isolated in a quaratine situation, or just cooped up in the mini-van on a drive to see the relatives, recorded books will keep even the youngest family members occupied!  In fact, I highly recommend storing at least one or two titles in your 72 Hour Kits.  Happy listening!!

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