Alanna the First Adventure: Audiobook
by Cherie Lee
Summer reading is approaching. Remember you can listen to books too, so why not try an audiobook?
In this first book by Tamora Pierce, Alanna wants more than anything to be a knight, but it's not allowed for girls in the country of Tortall. She finds a way to sneak into the school for boys, but she has a long and arduous road ahead of her before she can claim her shield.
Trini Alvarado, an actress who played Meg March in Little Women, reads the story. There are no special effects but her reading reminded me of an enthusiastic teacher and brought back good memories of elementary school storytimes. The audiobook our library owns is on cassette, but if you don't have a cassette player and would really like to listen to it, the CD version is available on melcat.
In this day and age it seems stories about girls wanting to break the gender role are at least as common as the ones who don't, so I was originally skeptical of this story. Alanna's desire to do boys things didn't seem enough to define her as an interesting and individual character. But the school drama of her knights training and the fast paced adventure got me interested enough to read the rest of the stories which I also recommend.
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