Katherine Paterson has 12 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 11 narrators, with an average listener rating of 4.8★ across 17 ratings. The most-rated is Bridge to Terabithia.
Bridge to Terabithia
Summary
This beloved Newbery Medal-winning novel by best-selling author Katherine Paterson is a modern classic of friendship and loss. This middle grade novel is an excellent choice for tween listeners in grades five to six, especially during homeschooling. It's a fun way to keep your child entertained and engaged while not in the classroom. Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. And he almost is, until the new girl in school, Leslie Burke, outpaces him. The two become fast friends and spend most days in the woods behind Leslie's house, where they invent an enchanted land called Terabithia. One morning, Leslie goes to Terabithia without Jess and a tragedy occurs. It will take the love of his family and the strength that Leslie has given him for Jess to be able to deal with his grief. Bridge to Terabithia was also named an ALA Notable Children's Book and has become a touchstone of children's literature, as have many of Katherine Paterson's other novels, including The Great Gilly Hopkins and Jacob Have I Loved.
©1974 Katherine Paterson (P)2005 HarperCollins Publishers
The Great Gilly Hopkins
Summary
At age 11, Gilly is nobody's real kid. If only she could find her beautiful mother, Courtney, and live with her instead of in the ugly foster home where she has just been placed! How could she, the great Gilly Hopkins, known throughout the county for her brilliance and unmanageability, be expected to tolerate Maime Trotter, the fat, nearly illiterate widow who is now her guardian? Or for that matter, the freaky seven-year-old boy and the shrunken blind black man who are also considered part of the bizarre "family"? Even cool Miss Harris, her teacher, is a shock to her. Gutsy Gilly is both poignant and comic as, behind her best barracuda smile, she schemes against them and everyone else who tries to be friendly. The reader will cheer for her as she copes with the longings and terrors of always being a foster child. Katherine Paterson, winner of the 1978 Newbery Medal for Bridge to Terabithia and of the 1977 National Book Award for The Master Puppeteer, again reaches across boundaries with her wit, compassion, and love, and here creates an immensely engaging story about a child's desperate search for a place to call home.
©1978 Katherine Paterson (P)1996 Recorded Books
Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom
Summary
When 15-year-old peasant Wang Lee is kidnapped by ruthless bandits, he is afraid his life is over. But his fear turns to astonishment when a mysterious stranger, beautiful young Mei Lin, rescues him to serve in the forces of the Heavenly Army. As they fall in love, the two Chinese youths are caught up in the heady Taiping Rebellion and the beginning of The New Age. Suddenly they are separated by a new edict: men and women will no longer live or work together. This award-winning tale is of one of Katherine Paterson’s best. It was chosen for the American Bookseller “Pick of the Lists” and the Bank Street Children’s Book of the Year. Set against a backdrop of one of China’s most dramatic periods of history, it follows these two young soldiers as they are torn between the idealism of a movement seeking to restore the Empire to its people—and a perilous desire for each other.
©1983 Katherine Paterson (P)1995 Recorded Books, LLC
Jacob Have I Loved
Summary
"Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." With her grandmother's taunt, Louise knew that she, like the biblical Esau, was the despised elder twin. Caroline, her selfish younger sister, was the one everyone loved. Growing up on a tiny Chesapeake Bay island in the early 1940s, angry Louise reveals how Caroline robbed her of everything: her hopes for schooling, her friends, her mother, even her name. While everyone pampered Caroline, Wheeze (her sister's name for her) began to learn the ways of the watermen and the secrets of the island, especially of old Captain Wallace, who had mysteriously returned after 50 years. The war unexpectedly gave this independent girl a chance to fulfill her childish dream to work as a watermen alongside her father. But the dream did not satisfy the woman she was becoming. Alone and unsure, Louise began to fight her way to a place where Caroline could not reach. Renowned author Katherine Paterson here chooses a little-known area off the Maryland shore as her setting for a fresh telling of the ancient story of an elder twin's lost birthright.
©1980 Katherine Paterson (P)1992 HarperCollins Publishers
Preacher's Boy
Summary
Willful and high-spirited, exerting his independence at every turn, 10-year-old Robert "Robbie" Burns Hewitt plans to live life to the fullest - because the world is going to end at the turn of the century anyway! The year 1900 is fast approaching. Robbie decides that living by The Ten Commandments, which have been drilled into his head by his preacher father, is not meant for him - since he "ain’t got the knack for holiness." On his quest to be his own person, he stirs up trouble daily. Before long, he must choose between the truth and a lie while a man’s life hangs in the balance. Newbery Award-winning author Katherine Paterson brings to life Robbie’s honest emotions of anger, jealousy and fear, leading him to make a number of disturbing choices. Despite the challenges, Robbie emerges as an engaging character with a good heart.
©1999 Katherine Paterson (P)2001 Recorded Books
Bread and Roses, Too
Summary
Rosa's mother is singing again, for the first time since Papa died in an accident in the mills. But instead of filling their cramped tenement apartment with Italian lullabies, Mamma is out on the streets singing union songs, and Rosa is terrified that her mother and older sister, Anna, are endangering their lives by marching against the corrupt mill owners. After all, didn't Miss Finch tell the class that the strikers are nothing but rabble-rousers; an uneducated, violent mob? Suppose Mamma and Anna are jailed or, worse, killed? What will happen to Rosa and little Ricci? When Rosa is sent to Vermont with other children to live with strangers until the strike is over, she fears she will never see her family again. Then, on the train, a boy begs her to pretend that he is her brother. Alone and far from home, she agrees to protect him, even though she suspects that he is hiding some terrible secret. From a beloved, award-winning author, here is a moving story based on real events surrounding an infamous 1912 strike.
©2006 Minna Murra, Inc (P)2006 Random House, Inc. Listening Library, an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group
The Flint Heart
Summary
Long ago, in the land of Dartmoor, a magic man created an enchanted charm that granted its possessor incredible power - at the cost of the wearer’s own tenderness and compassion. After the merciless Flint Heart causes much destruction, it is lost among the reeds and rocks of the moor, where a kindly farmer discovers it thousands of years later. With the Flint Heart in his possession, the once adoring father Billy Jago is transformed into a cruel and merciless brute. Young Charles is determined to win back his father’s true nature, and with his sister Unity and dog, Ship, he sets off into an enchanted world where animals talk, fairies hold elaborate banquets, and magical mischief must be resolved to bring Dartmoor and Merripit Farm back to rights again. This luminous fantasy by Katherine and John Paterson, freely abridged from Eden Phillpotts’s original story, is a tale that promises to capture the hearts of listeners with an enchantment all its own.
©2011 Katherine Paterson, John Paterson (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.
The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks
Summary
A compassionate couple risks their lives to reunite a pair of Mandarin ducks and are rewarded in the end - but by whom?
©1990 Lodestar (P)1998 Weston Woods
Jip, His Story
Summary
Winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction They tell Jip he tumbled off the back of a wagon when he was small, and no one ever came back for him. He never had a reason to question this tale - but then a stranger shows up and begins asking about him around town. Who is this man, and could he possibly know something about Jip's past?
©1998 Katherine Paterson (P)2018 Listening Library
The Same Stuff as Stars
Summary
Katherine Paterson, author of Newbery Medal winners Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved, again displays her storytelling talent in this powerful novel. Eleven-year-old Angel must play the adult when she and her brother are abandoned at their great-grandmother’s house and the old lady proves incapable of caring for them. An emotional tale, this drama teaches the age-old lesson that every person can stand tall when the world lets them down.
©2002 Minna Murra, Inc. (P)2004 Recorded Books
Come Sing, Jimmy Jo
Summary
Written by Newbery, National Book Award, and Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal winner Katherine Paterson The Johnsons are becoming country music stars. They're on TV and the radio - and it's all because of James. His voice and his guitar playing bring the songs to life, and make the audiences beg for more. Most kids would love it. Not James. He's had to change his name to "Jimmy Jo", dress in clothes he hates, and turn into someone else. Will he ever be able to cope with the fame?
©1985 Katherine Paterson (P)2018 Listening Library
Park's Quest
Summary
Written by Newbery Medalist, National Book Award winner, and Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal recipient Katherine Paterson Park can't figure out why his mother refuses to talk about his father who died in Vietnam. Park has no memory of him. But he is determined to find out the answers to his questions. When Park's search finally takes him to his grandfather's farm in rural Virginia, he meets obstacles beyond his imagining. Instead of being welcomed as the long lost heir, he is taunted by a young Vietnamese girl. Who is she, and what is she doing on the family farm? And will Park be able to accept the ultimate truth he has sought?
©1989 Katherine Paterson (P)2019 Listening Library