7 Great Audiobooks for Your Family Road Trip

There’s an art to choosing a good road trip book: It needs to have enough action to keep your attention, appeal across a wide range of ages, and be funny enough that you reach your destination with a smile on your face.

Half the fun of a road trip is getting there, and when the license plate game and reading road signs have slowed their thrill, you can always count on a good book to make the miles fly by. There’s an art to choosing a good road trip book: It needs to have enough action to keep your attention, appeal across a wide range of ages, and be funny enough that you reach your destination with a smile on your face. It sounds like a tall order, but these books are a good bet.

The Boy Who Lived with Dragons by Andy Shepherd, read by Ewan Goddard

Try this if you liked: The BFG

Where do dragons come from? Tomas definitely didn’t expect that one of the dragonfruits from his grandfather’s garden would hatch a baby dragon, but that’s exactly what happens. Hijinks ensue as Tomas tries to figure out how to take care of his new pet — and keep him from destroying the neighborhood.

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The Children of Castle Rock by Natasha Farrant, read by Angela Ness

Try this if you liked: Swallows and Amazons

Maybe it's the lilting Scots accent, maybe it’s the eccentric boarding school story, maybe the it’s the three-friends-on-an-adventure plot, but there’s something about this book that’s absolutely irresistible. When Alice’s up-to-mischief father sends her a request to meet him at an abandoned castle in the Scottish wilds, she teams up with two of her new boarding school friends to make the meeting.

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The Girl, the Cat, and the Navigator by Matilda Woods, read by Stephanie Foxley

Try this is you liked: The Wolf Wilder

The seventh of seven daughters, Oona yearns to explore the seas with her father on his ship The Plucky Leopard — but, her father insists, that’s not what girls do. So Oona takes matters in to her own hands, stowing away on the ship in hopes of discovering a magical nardoo.

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The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karina Yan Glaser, read by Robin Miles

Try this if you liked: The Penderwicks

With Isa off at orchestra camp, the remaining four Vanderbeekers hatch a plot to transform the abandoned lot next door to their Harlem brownstone into their own secret garden. This is a slow-paced, low-stakes family adventure that makes you wish you knew the Vanderbeekers in real life, too.

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Peasprout Chen, Future Legend of Skate and Sword by Henry Lien, read by Nancy Wu

Try this if you liked: Roller Girl

Admittedly a little all over the place, this novel about an ice skating kung fu competition (you read that right) powers through on pure adrenaline-fueled fun. Peasprout and her brother Cricket find themselves caught up in a competition that takes a turn for the political.

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How to Train Your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, read by David Tennant

Try this if you liked: The Hobbit

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock the Third is tasked with training a particularly bratty young dragon in this book that’s almost nothing like the movie. (And some of us could happily listen to David Tennant read the back of a cereal box for four hours.)

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Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, read by Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki, Harlan Ellison, and Gabrielle de Cuir

Try this if you liked: Ready Player One

Ender Wiggin tests his way into an exclusive government school determined to win the war that threatens humanity. Meanwhile his brother and sister concoct a political scheme to save humanity from itself. This is a sci-fi classic that will keep you on the edge of your seats.

(We’re Amazon affiliates, so if you purchase something through an Amazon link, we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Obviously this doesn’t influence what we recommend, and we link to places other than Amazon.)This was originally published in the summer 2019 issue of HSL.

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