listening library

I have some great news to share today! I’m thrilled to announce that Lis­ten­ing Library at Pen­guin Ran­dom House Audio will be pro­duc­ing an Emmanuel’s Dream audio­book edi­tion!! This is super excit­ing to me for two reasons:
First, I love lis­ten­ing to audio­books! I lis­ten when I’m walk­ing the dog, dri­ving, doing house­work, basi­cal­ly any­time it isn’t prac­ti­cal to have my nose in a book. 😂  So trust me when I say that hav­ing one of my books be made into an audio­book makes me squeal for joy and bust out my hap­py dance!
The sec­ond rea­son, how­ev­er, is far more impor­tant. Emmanuel’s Dream was award­ed the 2016 Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion’s Schnei­der Fam­i­ly Book Award for embody­ing “an artis­tic expres­sion of the dis­abil­i­ty expe­ri­ence for child and ado­les­cent audi­ences.” One of the things that moved me most about win­ning the award was learn­ing that it meant that a braille edi­tion of Emmanuel’s Dream would be released. That still left some read­ers out, sad­ly, and I’ve been dream­ing of an audio­book ever since. Hav­ing an Emmanuel’s Dream audio­book edi­tion means more access for more peo­ple. It means those with vision impair­ments can hear Emmanuel’s inspir­ing sto­ry of social action. It means emerg­ing read­ers or read­ers with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties such as dyslex­ia can lis­ten to Emmanuel’s exam­ple of per­se­ver­ance in the face of chal­lenges. It means all chil­dren every­where will have anoth­er way to appre­ci­ate Emmanuel’s mes­sage of accept­ing every­one’s diverse gifts.
So, it is with great plea­sure that I can now say the Emmanuel’s Dream audio­book is sched­uled to be released on Jan­u­ary 26, 2021, and you even can pre­order it RIGHT NOW!
I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with the team at Lis­ten­ing Library, and I’ll be sure to share fur­ther details (like who will be nar­rat­ing!) as soon as I get them.