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Recording an audiobook like Inside Out and Back Again is always a challenge. Not only was this a book in verse, but it required a native speaker in a language that is not all that common among our usual talent pool of actors. Recorded Books lucked out, though, when we found Doan Ly. We were privileged enough to be able to interview both author Thannha Lai (TL) and narrator Doan Ly (DL) about their experiences with the book.

RB: Thannha, INSIDE OUT & BACK AGAIN is based on your own family’s experience emigrating from South Vietnam to Alabama in 1975. What made you decide to write a fictional story instead of a memoir?

TL: I belong to a large and vocal family, so if I had written a memoir I knew I would be explaining myself endlessly to my siblings, as their experiences and memories are bound to be vastly different from mine and from each other. I did try to incorporate all six brothers, two sisters and a mother, but all those characters proved impossible to distinguish, so I chopped the family down to three brothers and a mother. If it were a memoir, what would I say to the ones who were left out? Also, to create a narrative arc and drama, I needed to convey Hà’s evolution from anguish to acceptance within a year. In real life, that process took a decade. A memoir would have been slow and dull.

RB: Doan, would you tell us your own story about coming to America?

DL: When I was 7 years old, my family and I escaped from Vietnam on a little fishing boat crammed with 110 people. We almost died, but escaped the worst. We were in rough waters due to terrible weather, but it was a blessing in that we were not pirated. Those stories are the worst stories. Miraculously we were rescued and all survived. I spent a year in refugee camps in Indonesia, and then moved to Bloomington, Minnesota. I remember the day we landed. There was a blizzard. I had never really been in a car, and had never seen snow. It was as if I had just landed on Mars! But once we got to my great aunt’s house, there was a fire in the fireplace, and she handed me some apple slices. I felt so happy…

RB: What excited you most about reading the story?

DL: I felt very honored to be a part of such a great story, and such a beautiful work of writing. It excited me to know that not only is this story being told, but told so well by Thanhha Lai.

RB: In what way is your heroine, Hà, most like and/or most different from your 10-year-old self?

TL: Hà loves her snacks and so do I. Every time I’m back in Orange County, CA, where more Vietnamese live than anywhere else in the world except in Vietnam itself, I go from shop to shop gathering snacks as if saving for a famine. We both have tempers the size of the sky, and I must say, even with her screaming fit, she deals with hers much better than I did at age ten.

RB: Were there aspects of your family’s experience coming from Vietnam to the USA that you thought about including, but ultimately left out of your novel? (Or that you were going to leave out, but ended up adding?)

TL: I had written much more about Part I in Saigon, but in the editing process we decided to get Hà to Alabama faster and make that new world the heart of the novel. There were poems featuring TiTi, her best friend, where they tried to predict what would happen after the Communists enter Saigon. The events leading to April 30 were even more detailed, almost down to hourly increments for the day they pushed to get on the ship.

RB: Doan, do you have a favorite scene from the book?

DL: My favorite scene was the fall of of Saigon, at the end of the of Part I. I found it profoundly moving. The narrative had been building up to this point, technically and emotionally, so when the pilot came onto the boat to describe how Communist tanks had overtaken the presidential palace, and that “Saigon is gone,” it felt like I was hearing the news for the first time myself. It was surprising, in the recording booth, to feel as though someone just punched me in the stomach. I myself got so wrapped up, so lost in the story, that the news was heartbreaking and it was a struggle to contain the emotion in my voice. It’s strange. Even though I was born two years after the war, but it was such a part of my childhood and my identity. It’s in my DNA. I think that’s why I reacted so viscerally to that scene in the novel.

RB: You’ve said that you chose to write in verse to help reflect in English what it’s like to think in Vietnamese. Was this always your intention, or something you came to through the writing process?

TL: Oh, how I wish I had thought to write in verse from the beginning. But my brain likes to torture me—for 15 years in fact. I was writing a novel in prose about a Vietnamese family in Texas, but that novel never clicked because the voice was always wrong. Disgusted, I gave up. But the characters stayed with me, especially the youngest daughter. One day I started jotting down images to convey what she would be feeling while standing on the playground mute and alone. Those images became phrases, which became prose poems. Once I found the voice, writing Hà’s story took six months.

RB: Your book is so superbly suited for reading aloud! What excites you most about seeing it published as an audiobook?

TL: I’m thrilled that all the Vietnamese words will be pronounced clearly and beautifully. Even more, I imagine listeners closing their eyes and letting the images transport them to another time, another being. I think of these poems as music; they really must be experienced through the ears.

RB: Doan, how did you prepare for the recording?

DL: I also escaped from Vietnam when I was young. The story was in a lot of ways very close to home. I drew on a lot of my own memories, as well as from stories of relatives and friends and their experiences of the war, of loss, of leaving your family and home, and finding a new, different life. I also talked to my mom about the northern pronunciation of the Vietnamese words which appeared in the story, who in turn called on her best friend, a northerner, to help us out. We had some conference calls. It was a group effort!

RB: How did you and your director work together?

DL: [RB studio director] Claudia was wonderfully meticulous. She’s the top of the top and could hear such subtle details in my voice, in my delivery. he sought always for a clear and nuanced way of just delivering the text. Basically, she got me out of the way. I didn’t need to do much, because everything has already done by the author. I loved how rigorous she was with me. I felt in very good hands. She taught me a great deal.

RB: What did you find particularly challenging about the narration?

DL: The novel is written in verse. I wanted to honor the line breaks, the negative space on the page, the way my eye perceived the text and how that informs the melody and meaning. I was trapped in a visual context, whereas recording is all about story telling, about being of an aural context. I don’t know what came over me! I should have known better, having had years of experience working on Shakespeare.

RB: Thannha, we have to ask: Do you plan to revisit Hà and her family in future novels?

TL: It’s been such a magical experience that right now I think it’s best to leave Hà and her family alone. But in another five, ten years? Who knows?

Thank you so much, Thannha and Doan, for taking the time to answer our questions and working to bring this wonderful book to life!

In the tradition of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel and Carolyn Jessop’s Escape, Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox is a captivating story about a young woman determined to live her own life at any cost.

The Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism is as mysterious as it is intriguing to outsiders. In this arresting memoir, Deborah Feldman reveals what life is like trapped within a religious tradition that values silence and suffering over individual freedoms.

The child of a mentally disabled father and a mother who abandoned the community while her daughter was still a toddler, Deborah was raised by her strictly religious grandparents, Bubby and Zeidy. Along with a rotating cast of aunts and uncles, they enforced customs with a relentless emphasis on rules that governed everything from what Deborah could wear and to whom she could speak, to what she was allowed to read. As she grew from an inquisitive little girl to an independent-minded young woman, stolen moments reading about the empowered literary characters of Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott helped her to imagine an alternative way of life. She had no idea how to seize this dream that seemed to beckon to her from the skyscrapers of Manhattan, but she was determined to find a way. The tension between Deborah’s desires and her responsibilities as a good Satmar girl grew more explosive until, at the age of seventeen, she found herself trapped in a sexually and emotionally dysfunctional marriage to a man she had met for only thirty minutes before they became engaged. As a result, she experienced debilitating anxiety that was exacerbated by the public shame of having failed to immediately consummate her marriage and thus serve her husband. But it wasn’t until she had a child at nineteen that Deborah realized more than just her own future was at stake, and that, regardless of the obstacles, she would have to forge a path—for herself and her son—to happiness and freedom.

“Deborah Feldman was raised in an insular, oppressive world where she was taught that, as a woman, she wasn’t capable of independent thought. But she found the pluck and determination needed to make the break from that world and has written a brave, riveting account of her journey. Unorthodox is harrowing, yet triumphant.”—Jeannette Walls, #1 bestselling author of The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses

“Feldman gives us special insight into a closed and repressive world. … Her memoir is fresh and tart and utterly absorbing.” —Library Journal

“Nicely written … [An] engaging and at times gripping insight into Brooklyn’s Hasidic community.” —Publishers Weekly

“A remarkable tale.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Feldman’s evolution as well as her look inside a closed community make for fascinating reading … her storyteller’s sense and a keen eye for details give readers a you-are-there sense of what it is like to be different when everyone else is the same.” —Booklist

THE SECRET OF THE FORTUNE WOOKIEE is a Recorded Books exclusive, and will be available on our 4th quarter Children’s COP and One Click Digital. Recorded Books is the exclusive audio publisher of all of Tom Angleberger’s Origami Yoda titles: THE STRANGE CASE OF ORIGAMI YODA, DARTH PAPER STRIKES BACK, and THE SECRET OF THE FORTUNE WOOKIEE, as well as his equally funny standalone middle grades: HORTON HALFPOTT and the forthcoming (3Q Children’s COP) FAKE MUSTACHE.

Listen to the force…and Tom Angleberger!

Read our interview with one of the narrators of THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ORIGAMI YODA, Mark Turetsky, and find out why he had to re-record some sections because his Yoda impression was “too good”!!

SWEET TOOTH by Ian McEwan
Serena Frome, the beautiful daughter of an Anglican bishop, has a brief affair with an older man during her final year at Cambridge, and finds herself being groomed for the intelligence service. The year is 1972. Britain, confronting economic disaster, is being torn apart by industrial unrest and terrorism and faces its fifth state of emergency. The Cold War has entered a moribund phase, but the fight goes on, especially in the cultural sphere. Serena, a compulsive reader of novels, is sent on a secret mission codenamed Sweet Tooth, which brings her into the literary world of Tom Healey, a promising young writer. First she loves his stories, then she begins to love the man. Can she maintain the fiction of her undercover life? And who is inventing whom? To answer these questions, Serena must abandon the first rule of espionage—trust no one.

Ian McEwan was born in 1948 in Aldershot, England. He studied at the University of Sussex, where he received a BA degree in English Literature in 1970. He received his MA degree in English Literature at the University of East Anglia. McEwan’s works have earned him worldwide critical acclaim. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1976 for his first collection of short stories FIRST LOVE, LAST RITES (a Recorded Books exclusive); the Whitbread Novel Award (1987) and the Prix Fémina Etranger (1993) for THE CHILD IN TIME (a Recorded Books exclusive); and Germany’s Shakespeare Prize in 1999. He has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction numerous times, winning the award for AMSTERDAM (a Recorded Books exclusive) in 1998. His novel ATONEMENT (a Recorded Books exclusive) received the WH Smith Literary Award (2002), National Book Critics’ Circle Fiction Award (2003), Los Angeles Times Prize for Fiction (2003), and the Santiago Prize for the European Novel (2004). He was awarded a CBE in 2000. In 2006, he won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel SATURDAY (a Recorded Books exclusive), and his novel ON CHESIL BEACH was named Galaxy Book of the Year at the 2008 British Book Awards. McEwan has been named the Reader’s Digest Author of the Year for 2008, the 2010 Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, and in 2011 was awarded the Jerusalem Prize.

SWEET TOOTH will be a Fourth Quarter 2012 release.

Celebrate National Women's History Month, sponsored by the National Women's History Project. This year, teach your students about a woman from history they might not know about.

• Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller – Sarah Miller's accomplished debut presents a fictionalized account of Anne Sullivan's life and her time as Helen Keller's teacher. Arriving at Ivy Green in 1887, Anne was a partially blind orphan who had been tasked with teaching the difficult blind, deaf, and mute girl to communicate. Anne quickly learned, along with Helen, that “words are a miracle.”
• Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote by Tanya Lee Stone – This Junior Library Guild Premier Selection introduces young listeners to women’s rights pioneer Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
• Madam C.J. Walker by A’Lelia Perry Bundles – The first African American female millionaire, Madam C. J. Walker rose from rags to riches. Orphaned at the age of 7, married at 14, widowed at 20, she dreamed of a better life for herself. Determined, she developed a new hair-care preparation for black women, selling it door-to-door. From this meagre start, she went on to owning her own cosmetics company.
• Let Me Play, The Story of Title IX: The Law That Changed the Future of Girls in America by Karen Blumenthal – The seeds for Title IX were sown amidst the violent social upheavals of the 1960s. And through the perseverance of many women and civil rights advocates, it opened—and kept open—many doors for women beginning in 1972. A Junior Library Guild Selection and winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award, Let Me Play is an inspiring collection of stories about women fighting for equality.
• Girls Think of Everything by Catherine Thimmesh – Often overshadowed by famous male inventors, women have also made many significant contributions to science and industry. This audiobook profiles women like Stephanie Kwolek who created Kevlar® body armor. You’ll also hear about women like Ruth Wakefield, whose Toll House Cookie recipe has satisfied the sweet tooth of millions, and Grace Murray Hopper, a mathematician and Navy officer who pioneered the science of computer programming.
• Women of Hope: African Americans Who Made a Difference by Joyce Hansen – Hear about the life of acclaimed actress Ruby Dee and 1983 Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker. Meet the first African American woman to travel into space and the first African American resident neurosurgeon.

What are you doing to celebrate women’s history?

Newbery Honor Books
Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai – RB Exclusive scheduled for early 2nd quarter release

Based on the author’s own experience, this National Book Award Winner is a historical novel detailing an immigrant family’s assimilation from war-torn Vietnam into life in suburban Alabama.

Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelkin – RB Exclusive scheduled for July release

Ten-year-old Sasha can’t wait to become a Young Pioneer and fight for Communism in Stalin’s USSR. But when his father is arrested, Sasha is left questioning everything he’s been taught.

More ALA Award-Winners

Me … Jane by Patrick McDonnell – RB Exclusive available now

Sure to both entertain and teach young readers, this Caldecott Honor Book is an imaginative biography based on famed biologist Jane Goodall’s childhood and her special relationship with a stuffed chimpanzee.

Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard – RB Exclusive scheduled for 2nd quarter release

This William C. Morris Debut YA Finalist is a coming-of-age tale “in the tradition of John Knowles’ A Separate Peace” according to Publisher Weekly. It’s also one of the most celebrated debut novels of 2011, earning starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Horn Book Magazine.

The Alcatraz series by Brandon Sanderson – RB Exclusive; entire series due out in 2012

The first book in the series, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, was named an ALA Notable Recording for Children. The second book, Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones, has just been released on audio, with the next two due out before the end of 2012.

Lots More Notable Children’s and Youth Adult Titles

All the Right Stuff by Walter Dean Myers - RB Exclusive scheduled for 3rd quarter release

Walter Dean Myers, the new National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, granted us exclusive rights to his latest young adult novel. If you want to read more about Myers’ journey from a young boy on the streets of Harlem to one of the most popular children’s authors in America, check out this article from the New York Times.

The Council of Mirrors by Michael Buckley – scheduled for 2nd quarter release

Michael Buckley’s ninth and final novel in his New York Times bestselling Sisters Grimm series, The Council of Mirrors follows Sabrina, Daphne, and the rest of the Grimms as they face off against the Master to decide the fate of Ferryport Landing—and the world.

Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan by Rick Bowers – scheduled for April release

A true story, Rick Bowers’ latest details how a 1947 radio show used the iconic Man of Steel to strike a major blow against racism and intolerance  in the U.S. Recently, School Library Journal interviewed Rick Bowers about the research and detective work he went through to write this book, which you can read about here.

That’s all for now, but be sure to check back for more announcements and audiobook news!

Check out these past blog posts and featured titles perfect for stimulating conversation in your young readers.

• Black History Month selections for children and YA
• Interview with Vaunda M. Nelson, author of Bad News for Outlaws
• Interview with Rita Williams Garcia, author of One Crazy Summer
• Video interview with Kevin R. Free, narrator of Bad News for Outlaws, and a classroom of Utah 4th graders

Reading Gives Them a Headache: Audiobooks are, of course, perfect for anyone who has vision issues! Even after a special problem like light sensitivity is diagnosed, audiobooks may still be useful for a break from having to look at the text. Though we always recommend a “listen and read” method that pairs print books with audio, students who need a break from the print will still be able to keep up with the rest of the class by just listening.

They Can’t Read as Fast as Others and Get Left Behind, Don’t Want to Get Put into the “Slow” Group, or Think They Are So Far Behind They’ll Never Catch Up: Speaking of keeping up with the class, using audiobooks in a “listen and read” fashion is a great way to keep everyone on the same page (or at least reading at the same pace). Research has shown that students’ reading comprehension actually raises when pairing audio with print—even in unique instances like Scholastic discusses, where a student can read quickly, but not comprehend at that speed. So whether the whole class uses audio or just those that need help keeping up, audiobooks are a great way to keep everyone up to speed.

They Fear Reading Aloud: If you still choose to use the “round robin” method of reading, students practicing with audiobooks will be able to build fluency and confidence for when it’s their turn to read aloud to the class. Alternately, you can play the audiobook for whole-class listening. Students will all be able to listen to a trained and talented narrator reading the book, rather than their peers possibly stumbling over words and phrases—which will improve comprehension.

They Expect to Fail or Can’t Remember : As mentioned before, pairing audio with print increases comprehension—so students who before struggled to understand the text will now be more confident come test day.

They Think They Have to Finish Each Selection, No Matter How Long or Difficult, or Aren’t Interested in the Matierial: We believe in giving students choice. But audiobooks may help students get through a selection that they’d otherwise find too long, difficult, or boring. And once they’ve finished one, they might be inspired to try more longer and difficult passages. Audiobooks allow readers to access a higher reading level than print alone, which can increase confidence in nonreaders and reading enthusiasts to try something they may not have picked up previously.

Fiction and Classics

STATE OF WONDER Ann Patchett
Read by Hope Davis (Harper Audio/Recorded Books)
“The audiobook equivalent of “couldn’t put it down” must be “couldn’t pause it.” There was little pause time during this reviewer’s amazing experience of Patchett’s new novel. Hope Davis astutely paces the suspenseful odyssey from a sedate Minnesota pharmaceutical lab to the darkest Amazonian jungle.”

Mystery and Suspense

BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP S.J. Watson
Read by Orlagh Cassidy (Harper Audio/Recorded Books)
“Cassidy draws listeners into the shadowy depths of Christine’s increasing fear each time a snatch of memory returns. This novel will haunt listeners, and Cassidy’s narration is top-notch.”

PIRATE KING Laurie R. King
Read by Jenny Sterlin (Recorded Books)
“Sterlin’s intelligent performance keeps Laurie R. King’s delightful descriptions, breakneck action, and appealing characters humorous and captivating.”

Nonfiction and Culture

BOOMERANG Michael Lewis
Read by Dylan Baker (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
“Baker’s voice reflects Michael Lewis’s bemused realization that many of these cultures and individuals had no idea of the manipulative power of the global financial industry. If you didn’t laugh, you’d cry.”

Biography and History

THE GREATER JOURNEY David McCullough
Read by Edward Herrmann (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
“Edward Herrmann’s sterling voice is compatible with McCullough’s familiar syntax and manner of inflection, and conveys the distinctive character and mood of his prose … This is popular history at its best and is certain to become one of this year’s most prestigious audio releases.”

Young Adult and Fantasy

A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES Deborah Harkness
Read by Jennifer Ikeda (Penguin Audio/Recorded Books)
“[Jennifer Ikeda's] narration is quietly charming. Often her voice holds a hushed rapture that reflects the magical world uncovered by Diana and Matthew … Through the narration, Matthew’s polished façade transforms to reveal a fierce knight determined to defend his mate.”

GOLIATH Scott Westerfeld
Read by Alan Cumming (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
“Westerfeld hints that it’s not the last we’ve seen of the duo. One hopes that the engaging Cumming will continue to soar with them.”

Multi-Voice Productions

GREAT HOUSE Nicole Krauss
Read by Alma Cuervo, George Guidall, Celeste Ciulla, et al. (Recorded Books)
“Beautifully read and artfully written, Krauss’s every sentence wraps itself around the heart. Prepare to be mesmerized.”

SING YOU HOME Jodi Picoult
Read by Therese Plummer, Brian Hutchinson (Recorded Books)
“Music is an apt accompaniment to a story about a music therapist who finds herself falling in love with a woman after her husband leaves her. The songs, written by Picoult and Ellen Wilber, who performs them, are placed at relevant points in the heartbreaking story. Therese Plummer performs the women’s roles with pure expressions of joy, anger, and grief … A bittersweet and riveting listening experience.”

UNFAMILIAR FISHES Sarah Vowell
Read by Sarah Vowell, John Slattery, Paul Rudd, et al. (Simon & Schuster Audio/Recorded Books)
“Vowell is a master of blending current culture and personal anecdotes with historical details.”