by Kate DiCamillo; read by Tara Sands. The Listening Library, 2013. Digital Audio. B00ENNI8HC. Grades 3-7.
Flora and Ulysses is the Newberry Award Winning book for 2014. It is the fantastic tale of a 10 year old girl, Flora, who encounters the extraordinary when an ordinary squirrel becomes in her mind a super hero. Flora is cynical, that is the first thing that you learn about her. The child of divorced parents she takes solace in comic books, something that her mother does not approve of and sees as a waste of her time. Then something unexplainable happens, a squirrel is sucked up into the Ulysses vacuum that her neighbor has just been gifted. When the squirrel awakens (after Flora performs CPR) he is suddenly gifted with unexplained strength, the ability to type, and the ability to FLY.
A major strength in this book is the general story. It is a story of an extremely smart girl who is unappreciated by her mother and those around her. The story is care free and easy to read. It isn't heavy, it is a book that can be enjoyed by all ages.
Tara Sands, the reader of this book is both a strength and a weakness. She is an incredible voice actress, with a different voice for each character. The only weakness to her voice acting is the voice that she chose for the main character, Flora. While she does a wonderful job at making the character 3 dimensional, the voice she chose can get a little grating to the ears. At times it is a little hard to listen to because of Flora's voice.
Another strength to the book is the way that they chose to incorporate music to convey drama. Since the listener is not able to see the illustrations in the book, the audio version incorporated a sort of super hero theme whenever Ulysses is about to do something extraordinary like type a poem or save Flora's father. It is a wonderful incorporation that really adds to the story.
This book is a wonderful addition to any audio library. While I do believe that the print version might be a bit better do to portions of the voice acting, this book would be a fun family "read" for a short road trip or family vacation. It is a definite way to keep kids of many ages entertained on a long trip.
Purchase it here on Audible.
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