sharing stories together

I wasn't read to as a child, there just didn't seem to be time. Bringing up five girls alone, meeting the demands of paid work, keeping abreast of the domestic work and all the in-betweens meant that reading to the girls just didn't get onto the list for my mum.
Nevertheless, somewhere along the way I fell in love with the power of story. I'm grateful. I can't imagine a better life than one immersed in stories.
I read to the girls usually twice a day, sometimes more. Bedtime stories are as close to an institution as we get around here. All these stories bring us together day in and day out, growing the inner world of our family.

And so we read but we all listen sometimes too and recently, some of our favourite moments have been while lost in a story together.
Audiobooks allow for this.
We love audiobooks; we drive with them, we rest with them and we sometimes get to share them with Gunter in the weekend or the evening. Actually we have one on the brink of being overdue at the library right now that we can't bring ourselves to return until Gunter has heard it too.
We choose by author, sometimes by narrator because as we all know, the right narrator can really bring a story alive.
Bill Wallis and The Tumtum and Nutmeg stories is a case in mind (available in the local library). I'm sure these are not stories we would have chosen to read (there are quite a few pretty naf mousey adventures out there) but after hearing Wallis' voice and style we were enthralled and surprisingly taken by these sweet adventure stories.
Ruby has done most of The Secret Seven and The Famous Five all by audiobook. Her apetite for these stories is greater than her current reading speed. This is where audiobooks have stepped into the breach.
And then there is our all time unbeatable favourite, Michael Morpurgo. We are devoted fans and it doesn't matter whether you are 7 or 70,  I think you will love these stories too.
In fact last week we went visiting new friends and had been listening to Morpurgo's "Farmer Boy" on the way in the car. It was a fairly long drive and so we had managed to go deep into the story. By the time we arrived at the doorstep, Sky's and my eyes were red with empathy for the main character. I explained fairly quickly that, no, it hadn't been a bad morning, just a captivating audiobook.
I hope she understood.
Stories do that at times.