100's of Immigrant Audiobooks Headed for Classrooms & Libraries
"We are stories." —Yuyi Morales
With a copy of the picture book Dreamers open on the desk, children in a Maine classroom listen to narrator Adriana Sananes read the line “we are stories.”
Adriana Sananes is not in the classroom. Her performance of Yuyi Morales’ award-winning Mexican American book is emanating from a slim audiobook player embedded in the book’s front cover. The classroom is using a Wonderbook, a new product from Playaway that is placing powerful audiobook narration into the read-along experience.
As the children turn the pages in time with Sananes’ voice, they are gaining the unique literacy and cultural experience of reading the text while it is read to them in a voice authentic to the story.
With a $15,000 gift from AudioFile Magazine, I’m Your Neighbor Books is placing Wonderbooks in all of the currently touring Welcoming Libraries. From Maine to California, Welcoming Library picture books will now say to readers “we are stories.”
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“By including Wonderbooks in the Welcoming Library, we are deepening the experience of these picture books both for kids inside the culture represented and for those outside of that experience. Imagine being a Mexican American child who only hears her community’s unique voice at home. Then the Welcoming Library arrives and that child gets to hear Adriana Sananes in her classroom. Transformative.”
—Robin Whitten, Founder and Publisher of AudioFile Magazine
Photo © Kevin Bruise