The sound of story.

Viewed from the outside, it was probably a fairly daffy career move. Why would someone with a thriving career as an author of childrens' books suddenly decide to become an audiobook publisher and try to build a whole new company from the ground up?

But that's exactly what I did when I decided to start Full Cast Audio two years ago. And, in truth, my reasons were fairly simple: I love the sound of great books being read by terrific actors. I love it even more when the book is brought to life by not one actor but by an entire cast, so that the text blossoms into a kind of "mental movie"--rich with performance yet utterly faithful to the original book. Most of all, I love being in the studio, working with actors and engineers to craft this kind of recording.

In other words, I got seduced.

I first fell in love with audiobooks while taking a cross-country drive with my daughter. Cara was fourteen at the time and we had decided to launch from our home in central New York, drive west until we ran into the ocean, then turn around and drive back. Knowing that the two of us would be locked together in a small metal box for long chunks of time, I decided to go to the library and check out a handful of unabridged recordings for us to listen to. (If you contrast the extensive audiobook sections in most major bookstores today with the fact that fourteen years ago the library was virtually the only place you could get an unabridged audiobook, you quickly get a sense of how rapidly the industry has been evolving.) Since the rental car we were using didn't have a built-in cassette player, I also had to buy a portable tape player, not to mention an adaptor that would let us plug it into the cigarette lighter socket. (Note how in that same span of fourteen years the dashboard cassette player has cycled from luxury to standard equipment to discarded technology. As of 2005 the auto industry will drop cassette players completely, a move that will have profound implications for audiobook publishers and listeners and librarians.)

Though it's been fourteen years, I still have vivid memories of listening to those books--some of the most vivid memories of the trip, as a matter of fact. And one of the best aspects of those memories is the way my daughter and I experienced the books together, not simply listening but discussing them extensively during the times that we were not actually listening. I know I am not alone in that feeling, since now, at age twenty-eight, Cara still inevitably mentions listening to those books whenever the trip comes up.

I also discovered that a teenager will "listen up" (so to speak), paying rapt attention to a novel they would be unlikely to read independently. Of course, that's partly because when you're riding through Kansas Pride and Prejudice is riveting. But it's more than the memory of story that keeps those experiences alive for us. The truth is, when you listen to a book together, you share it in a particularly intimate way.

Author Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb) expressed one aspect of this sharing quite deftly when she said, "One of the really nice things about audiobooks is that kids of divergent ages and reading abilities can suddenly have a book in common, which builds up a kind of 'cultural literacy' within the family--shared references, in-jokes, that sort of thing."

After that trip, it didn't take me long to think it would be wonderful if my own books were being recorded. Even so, I hardly expected I was going to end up an audiobook publisher. But between a love of the form and a taste for performance, one thing led to another and I've now been involved in producing (as well as often directing) over forty audiobooks, first in partnership with Tim Ditlow at Listening Library where we ran a fantasy imprint called "Words Take Wing" and for the last two and a half years with my own company, Full Cast Audio.

Even if I had anticipated that development, I doubt I would have predicted that I would end up devoting about a third of our list at FCA to young adult material. After all, I'm pretty thoroughly grounded in the world of middle grade fiction (though sometimes the lines get a little blurry, of course). But what I've found over and over again while reading new YA titles are books that are simply too good to resist. So I get seduced yet again, seduced when I read a book like James Howe's The Misfits, or David Lubar's Dunk, or Kathe Koja's Buddha Boy, or Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic stories, and soon I find myself thinking how wonderful it would sound on audio, being read by real kids. (That's partly because one of the things we take special delight in doing at FCA is gathering age-appropriate voices; our cast members have ranged in age from a four-year-old to folks in their seventies.)

Now that people are starting to discover Full Cast Audio, I'm frequently asked how we choose what books we want to record. The first and most basic step is simple: I have to fall in love with the book. (That's one of the luxuries of having a small company--we only do books we really, really love.)

Secondly, to make sense in our format a book has to be filled with dialogue.

Third, we have to know that we can cast the title, though now that we have developed a pool of over a hundred and fifty actors that is generally less of a concern for us.

But there is another aspect of choosing what to record that presents some special challenges for us--challenges probably familiar to most YA librarians. From the beginning we took a stand that our books would always be "family friendly." Of course, that's a somewhat flexible term, and one of our goals has been to try to do our part to wrest the word "family" from the grasp of the religious right, which sometimes seems to think they have a trademark on it.

My sieve in this regard is simple. I ask myself "Can an intelligent adult and an intelligent youngster listen to the recording at the same time with mutual pleasure and a lack of embarrassment?" That doesn't mean it won't be controversial. Heck, one of the greater pleasures of sharing literature is having spirited conversations about the ideas it generates. But it does mean that we need to be mindful of three audiences all at the same time: the teen listener, the adult listener, and the listening unit that is formed when teen and adult are listening simultaneously, which is a different creature altogether.

I became acutely aware of this recently when we were wrestling with the idea of recording a beautifully written YA novel that had some fairly overt sexuality. As with most such situations, the struggle forced me to clarify my own thinking on the matter. When we finally decided to pass on the book, it was not because of the sexuality itself. What tipped the decision was when I realized that while I was confident an adult could listen to the book with enjoyment, and that a teenager could listen to it with enjoyment, and even that most adults would be comfortable with a teenager hearing it, I was also fairly certain that most adults and most teenagers would not want to be listening to it in the same car at the same time!

One way to deal with the issue of appropriateness is to make sure that people know what they are getting. This is why we developed our "Teen Listening logo as a kind of guide for parents who are standing in a bookstore or library trying to decide whether a book is right for them or not. Basically it announces that you're in for a more mature listening experience--which is exactly what some people are looking for, and others want to avoid.

Hearing stories read aloud is what seduced (there's that word again) most of us into becoming readers to begin with. Yet many people seem to think that once kids are in their teens they should be reading on their own. Heavens, why should we deny them the pleasure of hearing something read aloud merely because they are old enough to do it on their own?

But there's something about audiobooks that seems to bring out the latent puritanism that is always percolating just beneath the surface of American culture, especially our educational culture. "Isn't it cheating?" people ask. "That's not really reading!" they sneer--as if there were something less pure about receiving a book through your ears rather than through your eyes--as if the whole of western literature were not founded in the oral tradition! (One wonders if these people would turn away from Homer singing the Iliad because it wasn't in written form ...)

What's really fascinating in this regard is that the more someone really loves books and reading, the less apt they are to hold this idea. Indeed, I have discovered over the years that the more passionate someone is about reading, the more apt that person is to be a fan of audiobooks. I suspect this is because, at the most basic level, audiobooks are simply a way to get more story, more language, more learning, more words into your life!

Naturally, we run into this Puritanism at another level with our full cast recordings, when once again the spectre of too much pleasure rises up and people are concerned that maybe a book read this way is perhaps too much fun, too interesting--as if by having multiple voices we are somehow tarting the books up. (The painted hussies of audio!)

But pleasure, of course, is the key to drawing kids--of any age--into reading. Dr. Teri Lesesne of Sam Houston State University in Texas has been doing research on using audiobooks with reluctant readers and ESL students in junior and senior high school, where she has found that the kids open up eagerly to the listening experience. "Audiobooks," she says, "are particularly important for kids who are not excited about books and reading, because they provide the motivation for them to read--and once we've motivated them we've got 'em!"

When I was discussing audiobooks with Megan Lindholm, she made this statement: "Dyslexia runs strongly in our family, mostly hitting the boys. Without audiobooks, they become the 'have-nots,' the ones who can't join the speculation on what Harry will do next. And I seriously believe that being a 'have-not' for too long can promote a sour-grapes, 'I hate books' attitude. It's difficult to love what one is excluded from."

What a wise statement: "It's difficult to love what one is excluded from."

In the best of all possible worlds parents would be reading to their children at length every night. But in the world we've been dealt, too often the sad truth is that the parents themselves don't have the necessary reading ability. Equally sad, by the teen years many kids would spurn such an offer anyway. For these young people audiobooks may be the last, best hope for an entry into the world of books. Not because they're a crutch. Because they are so thoroughly (gasp now, o ye puritans) pleasurable, and because the sound of a great story well read, whether by one voice or a full cast, is--as it has always been--the most effective way to seduce someone into the path of the reader.

"It's difficult to love what one is excluded from."

With the explosion of audiobook titles there is no need for any youngster to be excluded. Let every book be heard!

Bruce Coville is the author of ninety books for young readers, including My Teacher is an Alien; Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher; and Armageddon Summer (which he co-authored with Jane Yolen). His personal website is www.brucecoville.com. To find out more about FULL CAST AUDIO visit www.fullcastaudio.com or call 1-800-871-6809. Bruce is currently hard at work, he swears, on the third volume of The Unicorn Chronicles.