Best Children’s Audiobooks for Road Trips (2024)

If you’ve ever taken a road trip with your kids — or plan to in the future — you may be curious about ways to keep your kids engaged and entertained while they’re in the car for several hours.

Many parents want to avoid tablets, handheld devices, and other screen-oriented entertainment options. If this is the case for you, you may want to consider introducing your children to different teen audiobooks during road trips.

Podcasts and kid audiobooks for road trips are two great ways to engage your child’s creative and imaginative thinking while keeping them entertained. Many options for children’s audiobooks and podcasts are fun for the whole family.

What are the best audiobooks for kids?

When it comes to the best children’s audiobooks, there are countless options. If you have a book from your childhood you remember enjoying, or if your kids know books they’ve wanted to read, you can search online to see if there is an audio version.

If you’re not sure where to start, the following list contains some of the most popular audiobooks for juvenile readers:

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• A Wrinkle in Time
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Book 1
• The Hobbit
• Inkheart
• The Lightning Thief
• Foreverywhere
• Matilda
• Charlotte’s Web
• How to Train Your Dragon
• The Tale of Despereaux
• The One and Only Ivan
• Mary Poppins
• Peter and the Starcatchers
• Pax
• The House at Pooh Corner
• The Weirdies
• New Kid
• The Golden Orchard
• The Whispers
• Wonder

Most of the books listed above are well-known, and all are appropriate options for children to listen to anywhere. If your kids are stuck in the car for hours during a road trip, it might be a great time to let them pick one or two audiobooks to listen to as a family.

If your children are younger, you may want to research to learn more about the best audiobooks for preschoolers, but many of the options listed above would still be a good fit.

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What are the best podcasts for kids? 

If you don’t feel like listening to an audiobook, you could choose among the countless children’s podcast options. Some podcasts are devoted to creative storytelling, some to music, and some to bits of helpful information and humor. 

The following podcasts are among the most popular for children:

• Wow in the World
• Girl Tales
• Unspookable
• Smash Boom Best
• Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child
• Tumble
• Five Minutes with Dad
• Story Pirates
• Brains On!
• What If World
• Story Time
• Peace Out
• Short & Curly
• Little Stories for Tiny People
• Book Club for Kids
• Dream Big
• Circle Round
• Live from Mount Olympus

Some families prefer podcasts over audiobooks as they offer more variety and are often much shorter per episode than an entire book. However, it would help if you tried audiobooks and podcasts with your kids to introduce them to multiple options. Audible offers some great audiobooks for road trips with kids.

How can I find audiobooks for road trips?

Though some may think they need a subscription to listen to audiobooks, there are ways to find and listen to them for free. There are several websites devoted to offering free audiobooks, including:

• Loyal Books
• Open Culture
• Digitalbook
• Overdrive
• LibriVox
• Lit2Go
• Project Gutenberg
• Archive
• StoryNory
• Thought Audio

Some of the options listed above offer an endless supply of audiobooks for free, while others offer a certain number of free audiobooks per month.

Another option for finding free audiobooks is through your local library. Many county libraries now include subscriptions to audiobook providers — like Overdrive — for free. To get free audiobooks on your smartphone, ensure you have an up-to-date library account with a working library card.

If you prefer to pay for a subscription to an audiobook provider, some of the most popular options include:

• Audible
• Audiobooks.com
• Blinkist
• Bookbeat
• Chirp
• Downpour
• Kobo
• Libro.fm
• Scribd

Typically, the companies listed above offer a certain number of audiobooks per month. So you may want to research which option would work best for you based on the number of books you want to listen to per month.

How can I find podcasts for road trips?

Similar to audiobooks, you’ll come across options for free podcasts and some that require a subscription. Some of the most common options for finding a podcast include:

• Spotify
• SoundCloud
• Pocket Casts
• Stitcher
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Play Music
• Castro
• Overcast

If you’re interested in streaming content regularly, a subscription to a service like Spotify will allow you to stream podcasts and music for yourself and your children. However, all of the services listed above also have options to stream podcasts for free.

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Is it safe to listen to podcasts while driving?

It’s perfectly safe to listen to audiobooks or podcasts while driving if you’re not too focused on the book or podcast episode to drive fully engaged.

Distracted driving is a significant problem on the road, and countless individuals and families get in car accidents every day as a result. Aside from being dangerous, car accidents can impact your driving record and auto insurance and make insurance rates extremely expensive.

To avoid distracted driving:

• Avoid using your phone
• Practice defensive driving
• Avoid eating and driving
• Limit the level of activity in the vehicle
• Put someone else in charge of the music, audiobooks, or podcasts

Choose what you’ll be listening to before starting your trip to avoid distractions while driving.

If you’re going on a road trip and your kids are old enough, have them use your phone or device to select songs to avoid distracted driving.

Kids’ Audiobooks and Podcasts for Road Trips: The Bottom Line

There are plenty of options for kids’ audiobooks, and the same goes for podcasts. After a little bit of research, you should be able to find a book or program everyone can enjoy.

Choose the audiobook or podcast you want to listen to before your trip begins, and enlist the help of your children when it’s time to use a smart device to avoid using your phone while driving.

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