6 Best Audiobooks for Family Road Trips
Planning a road trip this summer? Be prepared and bring along plenty of audiobooks! Check out this list of best audiobooks for family road trips.
If you’ve ever gone on a long road trip with your family, halfway through the trip you might have wondered what you were thinking.
As everyone gets restless and boredom sets in, the tension in the vehicle begins to mount.
The mood goes from one of excitement to one of restlessness, and then, finally, to one of misery.
Have you ever had that experience? Please tell me I’m not the only one!
Why We Love Audiobooks
Last year we took a looooong road trip to Florida. It was very long!
It was 17 hours in a minivan with 5 kids, 2 adults, tons of luggage, and barely room to move at all.
Did I mention it took forever to get there?
Thankfully, my husband had the genius idea to plan ahead and purchase some audiobooks and audio dramas for the trip.
We also brought along a couple of movies the kids could watch, but we preferred the audiobooks since it was something we could all enjoy.
Audiobooks allow the whole family to share in the story, and they also allow children to continue to enjoy the scenery we’re driving through, rather than staring at a screen.
Once we realized how powerful audiobooks could be for road trips, we started bringing one along pretty much anytime we knew we’d be in the vehicle for an hour or so.
We’re a little old school and listened to these audiobooks on CD.
But now it’s so easy to download audiobooks to an app on your phone, then play the books over your vehicle’s audio system.
Plus with downloads you don’t have to worry about scratched or missing CDs!
Best Audiobooks for Family Road Trips
There are so many audiobooks out there to choose from, and I’ve only included a few classics in this post.
Just click the titles below to be taken to the downloadable audiobook version of each book. You can also select CD versions on some of these as well.
This post contains affiliate links. See my disclosures here.
1. The Witch of Blackbird Pond
Our whole family loved this book! Even though we’d been hearing about this story for years, we still hadn’t gotten around to actually reading it yet.
Listening to the audiobook was a very enjoyable way to share the story together as a family.
I still remember listening to this book this past fall as we drove to the apple orchard (a couple hours from where we live) and then finishing it up the following month as we drove to the pumpkin patch (also a couple hours’ drive).
2. The Sign of the Beaver
It had been several years since I read this book to my oldest son during our school read aloud time, and the rest of the family hadn’t heard it.
This was another story the whole family really enjoyed.
3. Little House in the Big Woods
You can’t go wrong with The Little House books!
My husband and I read these when we were young, and we’ve been reading them to each of our kids for over 20 years.
4. The Boxcar Children
This is a fun series about four orphan children and the adventures they have.
It might not be quite as interesting to older (12 +) kids but the whole family could enjoy these.
5. Mr. Popper’s Penguins
This book is a clever and humorous story about a housepainter who got involved with a troupe of penguins.
6. Hattie Big Sky
My daughter and I listened to this story as I drove her to and from her orthodontist appointments last year (2 hours both ways!).
I had never even heard of this book before, but I loved the story, and I thought the narrator did an excellent job.
What Are Your Favorites?
So, those are the best audiobooks for family road trips that I know of at this point.
Another time I’ll try to share our favorite audio dramas, as those have also been a staple of our road trips.
But now I’d love to know if you have any favorite audiobooks we could add to our collection!
Let me know the titles of your favorites in the comments!
Joy,
My family and I have spent many an hour in the car driving across the country and we enjoyed the Harry Potter books. The books are long enough that one book would last for most of the trip. Did you know that some libraries carry Audio Books and they can be checked out just like regular books? I don’t know if Cracker Barrel still does their rent an Audio book thing or not but a few years ago they had a program where you would rent the audio story and could return it to any other Cracker Barrel and exchange it for a new one. Hope you have good travels this summer.
Maureen
Thanks for sharing the tip about getting audio books at the library, Maureen! We have done that a few times, and it’s so helpful. I had never heard of the Cracker Barrel program—what a great idea!
This was a great list. We are taking a long trip to Virginia and do go through all of the various phases. A little too quickly. I wrote these down to purchase and try for our trip. Thanks for the suggestions!
So glad it was helpful, Michelle! Have fun on your trip!