In advance of the holiday travel season, KidsPost features books on CD today (12/10/07). Staff writer Amy Orndorff's three favorites include A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban (Harcourt, 2007), which is now on my to-read list (but not my to-listen list, if I even had one; thankfully, we're not traveling anywhere over the winter break this year). It's about ten-year-old Zoe, who dreams of playing the piano and has to settle for the organ. This book has been well-reviewed pretty much everywhere in the kidlitosphere; Elizabeth Bird's review at A Fuse #8 Production is particularly convincing. Plus, look at the stripey toe socks on the cover! I'm pretty sure I had a pair of those when I was ten. You can get your own at Sockdreams.com (the folks at Harcourt did when promoting the book).
KidsPost also recommended the audio version of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (Scholastic, 2007). How does an audio version of Hugo Cabret, which is told in both words and pictures (nearly 300 pages of them!) even make sense? I haven't read Hugo Cabret yet, either (it's on the list) but the book's website is fascinating, even if you didn't know you wanted to know about clockworks, cameras, and the early days of French filmmaking. I didn't!