Illustration by Stephanie Singleton

You never forget your first, right?

No, not that. First audiobook!

I’m a later-in-life disciple, formerly adamant that only the printed page held the pure experience until two audiobooks converted me forever: M. T. Anderson’s Feed, in which David Aaron Baker’s phenomenal solo performance gets impressively enhanced with an all-out techno whizbang production; and Gregory David Roberts’s Shantaram (suitable for mature teens), in which spectacular Humphrey Bower proved that even embarrassingly mediocre prose could magically transform into (43!) hours of addictive aural bliss. Now I’m rarely without a book stuck in my ears.

Writing for multiple publications (including the quarterly Audio column for SLJ), judging Audies for almost a decade, and running thousands of miles (former ultramarathoner), I’ve listened to—rough lifetime estimate—some 4,000 titles and reviewed maybe 2,000-ish. My obsession is well fed: according to the Audio Publisher Association’s (APA) latest 2024 sales survey, “publishers’ audiobook revenue grew 9 percent in 2023 to $2 billion, continuing the trend of year-on-year growth.” An earlier APA survey showed kids’ audiobooks had the fastest growth by category, a 44 percent uptick in 2022.

Getting kids hooked on audiobooks starts with great narrators. Do I have opinions about who’s great and who is soooo not? YEP!

Let’s get some of the obvious no-nos out of the way: relentless, over-the-top emoting; serviceable recitation instead of convincing narration; mispronunciations of foreign words and names; unnecessary (disrespectful) accents; sing-songy and other avoidable affectations.

Also, trust me: most “famous” actors are not superb audiobook narrators.

Audiobooks, indeed, are so much about personal connection—with the writer, their characters, what happens to them. Who tells that story to you is an intimate experience that can enhance and elevate—or contaminate and damage. Always choose your narrator wisely!

So what makes an exceptional narrator? A few thumbs-up characteristics:

Empathic rapport

They gotta make you believe.

Balanced pacing

Don’t tempt me to press that 2x option!

Authentic accents

A Chinese American actor is not necessarily going to voice Korean words accurately,

and Inspector Clouseau is never a French character to emulate.

Clear vocalization without distracting mouth sounds

A gasp to greet a ghost might be expected, but no gulping, heavy breathing, or dry smacking, please.
 

Nine such stars are gathered here—some with decades of industry experience, others just a few years. All have been consistently gifting audiences with unforgettable listens. Their strengths are diverse, but the most obvious wow! factor they share is a chameleonic ability to adapt and shift seamlessly among characters, experiences, and situations.

What Victoria Villarreal brings to the mic:

• multilingual versatility
• indefatigable energy

Adaptive, flexible, and with a hint of innocent earnestness, Victoria Villarreal’s voice is immediately likable—and just as immediately detestable for the bullies and baddies. She encompasses a range from sublime to rollicking in Aya de León’s Undercover Latina; she imbues Aida Salazar’s A Seed in the Sun with expressive rhythms and poignant depth. Narrating feeds Villarreal’s “pretty big imagination,” she says. Maya Van Wagenen’s Chronically Dolores is a prime example of her reach, as she jovially voices pithy bathroom reviews, un-Catholic confessions, and revisionist telenovela scenes—while navigating the complex lives of teens.

The daughter of Mexican immigrant parents, Villarreal is fluent in Spanish and says she’s cast in line with her background 90 percent of the time. She also narrates Spanish/English bilingual editions (Monica Brown’s Esperando el biblioburro/Waiting for the Biblioburro), and separate English and Spanish editions (Cynthia Harmony’s A Flicker of Hope: A Story of Migration, and in Spanish, Un aleteo de esperanza: Una historia de migración ). Feeding her “love of storytelling” is indeed a full-time job.

What Johnny Heller brings to the mic:

• humor
• timing
• eternal youth

Comedic actor Johnny Heller sounds perennially youthful but has had an award-winning, three-decade career. His first recording in “1990 or 1991,” he recalls, was “a little kid pop-up book called The Wave.” More than 1,000 titles have followed.

For younger audiences, comedy is Heller’s sweet spot. His timing is impeccable, his humor infectious, and listeners will recognize that he genuinely enjoys the stories he tells. He can sound like the Chicagoan that he is, but he also draws on his own accent—a mix of British and Irish heritages. Heller has narrated dozens of Suzy Kline’s “Horrible Harry” books, and his energetic, snarky, sometimes manipulative antics resound. The immense attitude—from self-righteous to sheepishly oh-so-sorry—he brings to Andrew Clements’s “Jake Drake” series can still induce an eye roll or 12.

The affable Heller gets mean in the full-cast audio drama The Real Education of TJ Crowley by Grant Overstake and May Wuthrich. “I play a really awful person,” he promises.

What Joniece Abbott-Pratt brings to the mic:

• timeless adaptability across plenty of drama

Joniece Abbott-Pratt made her audiobook debut in 2019 with Tonya Bolden’s empowering historical novel Inventing Victoria, creating centuries-ago characters with ease. Since then, she has racked up almost 200 credits.

Being a lifetime storyteller, Abbott-Pratt says, means she especially enjoys “the drama of the characters’ lives.” That manifests as distinct characterizations with perceptive, immediate adjustments for gender, age, and background, as well as centuries past, present, and future. Recent highlights include Tiffany D. Jackson’s Grown (she catches just the right in-between pitch of naivete and sudden maturation), Kelly J. Baptist’s Eb & Flow (she’s the energetic half of a free-versing dynamic duo, alongside Aaron Goodson), and Ciera Burch’s Finch House (she spiritedly creates an eerily, otherworldly fun house).

Abbott-Pratt’s versatility makes her a standout as she channels characters’ “emotional roller coasters.” We’re right there with her as she narrates across genres—including her preference, “cool, young adult, sci-fi drama.”

What Bahni Turpin brings to the mic:

• effortless accents
• exceptional diversity
• extraordinary female agency

Bahni Turpin is another instantly recognizable, distinctive voice. The TV/film actor expertly narrates for audiences of all ages, but she’s also clear about what she likes: magical mystical tales, slice-of-life with an edge.

A lifelong reader, Turpin has an aural arsenal featuring an astonishing range of Black accents—from lyrical West African to rhythmic Caribbean to enslaved Southern voices. No one can quite embody the dynamic emotions of the Black girl’s journey toward demanding her agency as Turpin achieves with such aching vulnerability—from soft and doubting, to nervous and fearful, to downright warrior. She’s incandescent in Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give; utterly enthralling in Tomi Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orisha” series; heartwrenching in Tiffany D. Jackson’s Allegedly. For lighter fare, consider Turpin’s delectable spin on Kelly J. Baptist’s Ready, Set, Dough!

What Greta Jung brings to the mic:

• adaptability
• accuracy
• authenticity

“ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH! I HATE KIMCHI!!!” wails Greta Jung, while dynamically narrating Aram Kim’s No Kimchi for Me! Her bold, comically emotional performance couldn’t be more convincing. In other recent standout audios, Jung effortlessly transports listeners to Seoul in Axie Oh’s XOXO and delivers a pivotal chapter to Soyoung Park’s acclaimed Snowglobe.

Jung’s superpower? Accurately and authentically narrating in English, Korean, and Spanish, putting the L.A.–based TV/film actor in demand. (Jung re-recorded an audio title deemed unacceptable for its blundering mispronunciations.) Among her many credits, only two didn’t require her to speak Korean.

Jung began her narrating career 12 years ago in a full-cast production of Hugh Howey’s I, Zombie as one of 10 gruesome undead performers. Her usual voice, though, tends toward a quiet gentleness with a youthful lilt that particularly enlivens all manner of Asian and Asian American female protagonists, from contemporary tweens to K-pop wannabe teens (Lyla Lee’s I’ll Be the One) to a (formerly) soul-devouring nine-tailed fox (Sophie Kim’s The God and the Gumiho). Commitment to marginalized stories, she says, is exactly why she became a performer.

What Guy Lockard brings to the mic:

• lived authenticity

Guy Lockard’s best friend, Jason Reynolds, tapped the TV/film actor to voice All American Boys by Reynolds and Brendan Kiely. Why? Reynolds “wanted to make sure the nuance of his language was coming through on the audiobook,” says Lockard. “Since we grew up together, I knew how to approach it in a way that was authentic.”

Lockard continues to be Reynolds’s chosen cipher; his latest is Stuntboy, In-Between Time, in which he leads a full cast. Personal synergy is immediately evident in Lockard’s wondrously ebullient performances—his energy fuels a remarkable versatility for distinctly unique personalities. Voicing three of Reynolds’s four fabulous “Track” series books (the fourth is helmed by Heather Alicia Simms) provides a beloved familiarity throughout the tetralogy.

Beyond his BFF duties, Lockard is equally affecting in channeling other writers’ words: he’s nuanced and intimate in Jacqueline Woodson’s Before the Ever After and moves through a tween’s anger, frustration, and fear to “do the right thing” in Wade Hudson’s The Reckoning.“ Audiences connect deeply with narrators who sound like they’re talking directly to them,” Lockard says. His success proves him right.

What Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa brings to the mic:

• überpolyglot who’s great solo and also plays notably well with others

Kurt Sanchez Kanazawa’s youthful voice is a glorious cipher for Emi Watanabe Cohen’s debut, The Lost Ryū: a sigh of relief is immediate upon hearing “ryū”—with exacting attention to that diacritical—then “Hiroshima” just so to confirm his obvious comfort in Japanese. Kanazawa, who is Japanese Filipino American, is additionally fluent in Italian, French, Hawaiian Pidgin English, and also speaks Spanish and German—all with a personable, warm invitation to listen to him talk story. The actor participated in a full-cast production of Traci Chee’s historical YA novel We Are Not Free, highlighting a group of Japanese American youth growing up in San Francisco’s Japantown before World War II. Kanazawa showcases his Japanese prowess as Twitchy, who enlists to prove his patriotism, while his family is unjustly imprisoned for looking like the enemy.

Kanazawa is equally comfortable as the entertaining cipher of Kirby Larson’s “Shermy & Shake” series, balancing the mayhem of quiet Shermy and rambunctious Shake, next-door neighbors. He turns thoughtful in Robbie Couch’s If I See You Again Tomorrow—while the protagonist relives one day hundreds of times, Kanazawa instills freshness.

What Avi Roque brings to the mic:

• multi-hyphenate representation sourced across multiple mediums

Theater-trained Avi Roque, who’s acted in TV, film, and video games, brings that experience to the recording studio, where their credits reflect a preference for LGBTQIA+ YA novels. “I am transgender, trans masculine, nonbinary, and queer,” shares Roque. Their first audio performance—lively and enhanced by Spanish fluency—was for Aiden Thomas’s Cemetery Boys, about a 16-year-old trans boy in an East L.A. brujx family who’s beyond ready to join the men as a brujo, but his father won’t acknowledge him as his son.

“I do really enjoy narrating” LGBTQIA+ YA, Roque says, because such titles didn’t exist or weren’t accessible to their younger self. They channel that youthful self with vivacious joy in Jessica Love’s Julián Is a Mermaid and Julián at the Wedding. Roque is also superb at playing with others in full-cast productions such as Cece Bell’s El Deafo and Pedro Martín’s Mexikid.

What André Santana brings to the mic:

• broad-spectrum character diversity enhanced with Spanish-fluent flexibility

A sensitive, in-demand narrator, André Santana has an extraordinary range: he embodies a soft lyricism for a boy who doesn’t speak in Tiffany Hammond’s A Day with No Words; he’s solemn and mischievous in Duncan Tonatiuh’s Game of Freedom; he’s a wistful cipher for a tween adoptee and his indulgent grandfather in Brenda Woods’s Just One Wing.

“Sitting down with a character that’s going to push me as an actor for several days is an unspeakably rewarding experience,” he says.

While he doesn’t want to be “cornered into only narrating content that aligns with [his] identities as Black, queer, immigrant,” Santana, who was born in Brazil and lives in New York, knows it’s important to have such stories in his portfolio.

He has an affection for YA and middle grade novels. “The books I love the most are going to be the ones that remind me what it means to be a human being,” Santana says. He adds, “Audiobook narrators go unseen so often, and their work should be celebrated.”

Terry Hong was LJ ’s 2016 reviewer of the year for fiction and audio.