5 Old-Timey Books that At Least 2/5 of My Kids Have Liked on Audio at the Same Time
Not every audiobook the kids listen to is “old-timey”—which, for the purpose of this post, is defined as 1960 or earlier for the original publication date of the book. There are a lot of American Girl and Magic Tree House books on tap, too.
I lean on three booklists for audiobook ideas (old-timey and otherwise).
John Senior’s 1000 Good Books list (the whole thing) can be found the back of his book The Death of Christian Culture and in part at the end of this article William Fahey wrote for Crisis in 2012 (Will Rascals Defend Our Civilization… and What Books will they Read? - Crisis Magazine).
Another much more recent find is from
’s Substack, The Classical Learning Digest, where he’s posted and added to a list originally compiled by Dr. Catherine Bilow.Finally, the Ignatius edition of Michael D. O’Brien’s A Landscape with Dragons ends with a booklist that is a great thing to have in your back pocket whether you agree with his conclusions about children’s literature or not. Case in point: I drew the inspiration for one of my daughter’s names from a Madeleine L’Engle novel. I didn’t change her name or purge our house of L’Engle books after I read Landscape. And I use that booklist at least once a week, for ideas for audio books and picture books from the likes of Aliki, Cooney, and Duvoisin—can you tell I’m putting these on hold in alphabetical order by author?
Finding a chapter book on audio from one of those lists for my kids on a free engine like Libby can feel a bit like playing go-fish. So here are five titles that I found on Libby that were either directly from those lists or inspired by them.
Libby (libbyapp.com) works by loaning e-resources that are available from your local library to the app on your phone, so just because mine had it, it doesn’t mean it’ll be the same story with your library. If I could find the book in my system, I noted the length of the audiobook in hours. These are stamped with The Hinds Family Seal of Quality, which is to say, at least two of the kids (who are all under the age of 9) have liked these at the same time (all links are just for reference, not affiliate).
The Racketty-Packetty House, Frances Hodgson Burnett, 1906, 1 hour
Toy Story’s great-great aunt, who lived in England, isn’t on any of the three lists, but Burnett’s novels, like The Secret Garden (1911, 8 hours) and A Little Princess (1905, 8 hours) are. And Racketty-Packetty is decidedly easier for the younger listeners. There are abridgements of classics, like A Little Princess (abridged, 3 hours) available, too, published by NAXOS and others. Here’s a full list of the NAXOS Junior Classics: Junior Classics – Naxos AudioBooks. I’ve found several of these in the Libby catalog, like the Jungle Book (abridged, 4 hours), the Just So Stories (unabridged, 3 hours) and Aesop’s Fables (abridged, 1 hour). Just look for the logo and the little columns in the top left corner of the cover.
Jonny says that abridged books are frankensteins at best but doesn’t quite mean it. So, while we’re at it, I’m also going to point out the existence of BBC Children’s Classics, which I could find on Libby, and the Focus on the Family Narnia audio dramas, which are available from the Focus website or on the well-loved CDs that I uncovered in my childhood bedroom.
The Moffats, Eleanor Estes, 1941, 4 hours
This delightful sibling story, followed by The Middle Moffat (1942) and Rufus M. (1943, 5 hours), is from Michael D. O’Brien’s list. I have no idea why my Libby system doesn’t have the middle book of the trilogy, because it was also highly acclaimed, but the kids loved Rufus M., which is, among other things, a story about how great the library is. Estes also wrote Ginger Pye (1951, 6 hours) and Pinky Pye (1958); the Pyes are the Moffats’ neighbors, naturally.
Peter Cottontail, Thornton W. Burgess, 1917, 2 hours
The good people of The Thousand Good Books Project are crowdsourcing recordings all of the books on John Senior’s list and making them available to families—this is excellent news for people like me who want to find audio versions of the books on that list, many of which are unavailable from Libby or even from the main library catalog, because they are all pretty old-timey. The Thousand Good Books Project has a modest subscription fee for access to everything and a free rotation which I found on my podcast app. For the past several months, the monthly free rotation has featured a Burgess title (Peter Cottontail, Jerry Muskrat, and company), which have been thoroughly enjoyed by the Hinds crew.
Question—Did Burgess borrow the name “Peter Cottontail” from Beatrix Potter (Peter Rabbit was published in 1902—also, Beatrix Potter the Complete Tales, 5 hours, Penguin has a full cast version)?
Heidi, Johanna Spyri, 1881, 11 hours
Johanna Spyri’s classic tale of what happens to children if you don’t let them outside enough (DEATH) would not have been as meaningful to our kids if Jonny hadn’t loved it. Parents can scaffold literature for their children simply by caring about it—in other words, use voices while you read The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937, 11 hours). Anyway, Jonny drives our first and second graders to school, and they usually listen to an audiobook. Heidi is beautiful and pastoral, and because of the season of life in which I found it (right after everyone came home saying they had finished and demanded I start), I read Spyri’s book like a treatise on prayer.
We’ve got Father Heidi Philippe here (and pardon me for spoiling anything with this):
As the children lay that night in bed looking out at the stars Heidi said, “I have been thinking all day what a happy thing it is that God does not give us what we ask for, even when we pray and pray and pray, if He knows there is something better for us, have you felt like that?”
“Why do you ask me that to-night all of a sudden?” asked Clara.
“Because I prayed so hard when I was in Frankfurt that I might go home at once, and because I was not allowed to I thought God had forgotten me. And now you see, if I had come away at first when I wanted to, you would never have come here, and would never have got well.”
Clara had in her turn become thoughtful. “But, Heidi,” she began again, “in that case we ought never to pray for anything, as God always intends something better for us than we know or wish for.”
“You must not think like that, Clara,” replied Heidi eagerly. “We must go on praying for everything ,for everything, so that God may know we do not forget that it all comes from Him. If we forget God, then He lets us go our own way and we get into trouble; grandmamma told me so. And if He does not give us what we ask for we must not think that He has not heard us and leave off praying, but we must still pray and say, I am sure dear God, that Thou art keeping something better for me, and I will not be unhappy, for I know that Thou wilt make everything right in the end.” (320-321, Children’s Classics edition).
Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren, 1945, 3 hours
I have a new friend. Well, two: Pippilotta Victoria Appleminta Ephraim’s-Daughter Longstocking and her mother, Astrid Lindgren.
Pippi is another “not from the lists but because of them” find. O’Brien does recommend other Lindgren titles, The Children of Noisy Village (1947, 2 hours) and its sequels Happy Times in Noisy Village (1949) and Nothing But Fun in Noisy Village (1952). I wouldn’t have put together that Lindgren also authored Pippi Longstocking unless it had popped up on an “also by this author” feature on the Libby app. Also by Lindgren and not qualifying for the “old-timey” label is Ronia the Robber’s Daughter (1981, 5 hours), and the saddest book that Jonny read during his childhood, The Brothers Lionheart (1973).
I had to know more about Lindgren after hearing the opening of The Children of Noisy Village. The lines are quoted in the Jens Andersen biography, Astrid Lindgren: The Woman Behind Pippi Longstocking, as he discusses her use of “the child as first-person narrator,” which was rare in the 1940s, but common practice now.
“I’m Lisa. I’m a girl, as you can tell from the name. I’m seven, and I’m turning eight soon. Sometimes Mamma says, ‘You’re Mamma’s big girl—won’t you be a sweetheart and dry the dishes today?’ And sometimes Lasse and Bosse say, ‘We don’t want little girls playing Indians with us. You’re too small.’ So I’m not sure whether I’m big or little.” (page 194 in Astrid Lindgren)
That is what a seven-year-old sounds like. Rendered for a book, certainly, but Lindgren wrote children’s dialogue in a way that wasn’t idealized or fantastical or preachy—it feels real. Lindgren had two children, Lars and Karin. Lars (or “Lasse”) was born when she was 19 and lived with a loving foster family for the first three years of his life. Karin came along eight years later. She once asked her mother for a story about “Pippi Longstocking” while sick—the Pippi mythology began there, as the best children’s stories often do, with a parent responding to their child’s plea to “Tell me a story!”
Pippi achieves the number one slot on my list because every single one of my children reliably loves her, the little boy, the sisters, and their eight-year-old ringleader, who does not care a bit that the strongest person in the world is a girl. All four of them, laughing together, all the way home or all through “quiet time.” The toddler even laughs at them laughing. We borrowed the sequels—Pippi Goes on Board (1946) and Pippi in the South Seas (1948)—as regular books. I read them aloud, but they’re perfect for any 8–12-year-old who wants a chapter book.
Perhaps Pippi disqualifies herself from other lists by firing loaded pistols at her own attic ceiling. Maybe it’s her egregious exaggerations. Who knows? “I’m going to be a pirate when I grow up… are you?”
On the Calendar: Fifth Week of Easter
🥚Alleluia is STILL our song! 🥚
Of course the Gospels during Easter (a loooooong liturgical season) have to feature things that happened before the Resurrection, but it’s still kind of a brain trip to focus on Jesus’ words to His disciples in the Upper Room on Holy Thursday. The Gospel reading at mass tomorrow is 🦅John 13:31-35:
When Judas had left them, Jesus said,
“Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself,
and God will glorify him at once.
My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
I give you a new commandment: love one another.
As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.
This is how all will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another.”
Next week we celebrate St. Rita of Cascia on the 22nd, recognized patroness of the impossible, and as much as I’d like to say that following the commandment in this Gospel with my nearest and dearest doesn’t ever fall in the category of “impossible”… well, maybe all of us could do with asking St. Rita for her intercession.
Last week I learned that 75% of you have reached that pitch of May madness where it’s hard to speak in full sentences, and friends, I feel you. My daughter came home from class declaring that “everyone else in my class is leaving the state during the summer, why aren’t we?” So I need some more raw data on this…
My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day
Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own. Sometimes TAN and Thomas Nelson run deals, though!
+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple (co-written with Tanner Kalina)
We partnered with January Jane for the inspiration for the content!
I appreciate your kids’ taste (particularly for Heidi!). And I’m glad you still like Madeleine L’Engle post-O’Brien - she is so excellent!