A.S. King has 4 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 5 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 12 ratings. The most-rated is Dig.
Dig
Summary
Winner of the Michael L. Printz Medal "King’s narrative concerns are racism, patriarchy, colonialism, white privilege, and the ingrained systems that perpetuate them.... [Dig] will speak profoundly to a generation of young people who are waking up to the societal sins of the past and working toward a more equitable future." (Horn Book starred review) "I’ve never understood white people who can’t admit they’re white. I mean, white isn’t just a color. And maybe that’s the problem for them. White is a passport. It’s a ticket." Five estranged cousins are lost in a maze of their family’s tangled secrets. Their grandparents, former potato farmers Gottfried and Marla Hemmings, managed to trade digging spuds for developing subdivisions, and now they sit atop a million-dollar bank account - wealth they’ve refused to pass on to their adult children or their five teenage grandchildren. "Because we want them to thrive," Marla always says. But for the Hemmings cousins, "thriving" feels a lot like slowly dying of a poison they started taking the moment they were born. As the rot beneath the surface of the Hemmings’ white suburban respectability destroys the family from within, the cousins find their ways back to one another, just in time to uncover the terrible cost of maintaining the family name. With her inimitable surrealism, award winner A.S. King exposes how a toxic culture of polite white supremacy tears a family apart and how one determined generation can dig its way out.
©2019 A.S. King (P)2019 Listening Library
Everybody Sees the Ants
Summary
Lucky Linderman doesn’t want to wake up. Lucky Linderman has been the target of Nader McMillan’s relentless bullying for as long as he can remember. But he has a secret—one that helps him wade through the mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos, where his grandfather, who never came home from the Vietnam War, is still trapped. There, Lucky can be a real man and maybe even a hero. But how long can he keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside? Printz Honor recipient A.S. King’s boldly original writing shines in this powerful novel about learning to cope with the shrapnel life throws at you—and taking a stand against it.
©2011 A.S. King (P)2012 Listening Library
Still Life with Tornado
Summary
A heartbreaking and mind-bending story of a talented teenage artist's awakening to the brokenness of her family from acclaimed Printz Award-winner A.S. King. Sixteen-year-old Sarah can't draw. This is a problem, because as long as she can remember, she has "done the art". She thinks she's having an existential crisis. And she might be right; she does keep running into past and future versions of herself as she wanders the urban ruins of Philadelphia. Or maybe she's finally waking up to the tornado that is her family, the tornado that six years ago sent her once-beloved older brother flying across the country for a reason she can't quite recall. After decades of staying together "for the kids" and building a family on a foundation of lies and domestic violence, Sarah's parents have reached the end. Now Sarah must come to grips with years spent sleepwalking in the ruins of their toxic marriage. As Sarah herself often observes, nothing about her pain is remotely original - and yet it still hurts. Insightful, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, this is a vivid portrait of abuse, survival, resurgence that will linger with listeners long after the last moment. “Read this book, whatever your age. You may find it’s the exact shape and size of the hole in your heart.” (The New York Times) “Surreal and thought-provoking.” (People Magazine) ”A deeply moving, frank, and compassionate exploration of trauma and resilience, filled to the brim with incisive, grounded wisdom.” (Booklist, starred review) ”King writes with the confidence of a tightrope walker working without a net.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) "[King] blurs reality, truth, violence, emotion, creativity, and art in a show of respect for YA readers." (Horn Book Magazine, starred review) “King’s brilliance, artistry, and originality as an author shine through in this thought-provoking work.... An unforgettable experience.” (SLJ, starred review)
©2016 A. S. King (P)2016 Listening Library
Switch
Summary
A surreal and timely novel about isolation and human connection from Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King. Time has stopped. It's been June 23, 2020 for nearly a year as far as anyone can tell. Frantic adults demand teenagers focus on finding practical solutions to the worldwide crisis. Not everyone is on board, though. Javelin-throwing prodigy Truda Becker is pretty sure her "Solution Time" class won't solve the world's problems, but she does have a few ideas what might. Truda lives in a house with a switch that no one ever touches, a switch her father protects every day by nailing it into hundreds of progressively larger boxes. But Truda's got a crow bar, and one way or another, she's going to see what happens when she flips the switch.
©2021 A.S. King (P)2021 Listening Library