Long road trips require lots of activities that will help pass time. We don’t want our kids watching movies the whole time so we have tried many different audiobooks over the course of the last few years. We’ve found that with audiobooks, the voice of the narrator makes a huge difference in whether or not we really enjoy listening. It could be an awesome book, but if the narrator has a boring or irritating voice, forget about it, my kids (and us parents) will lose interest. Following are some of the best audiobooks for family road trips.
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Best Audiobooks for Family Road Trips
If you can’t find these at your library (what we did), I highly recommend trying the free trial of Amazon Audible, as many of the books I’ve listed here can be listened to through an Amazon Audible subscription.
Encyclopedia Brown Series
We love these stories because they are quick, interesting, and give you a chance to try to solve the mystery before they tell you the answer.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series
We had, surprisingly, never read these books but I borrowed the first 2 audiobooks from the library before our last trip and we loved the stories. They are really entertaining and funny! We found the first 3 movies as a box set at Costco and purchased those on our trip as well, so I guess you can say we are now fans of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid.” 
The Explorers
This was a lucky find. A family member recommended The Mysterious Benedict Society (which we tried to listen to but, although the story seemed interesting, the narrator was really boring) and when I looked for it on Amazon, this one was on there as a recommendation. The library happened to have this one so I requested it and I am SO glad I did. What a fun mystery! We can’t wait for the next book to come out! This one, along with Diary of a Wimpy Kid and The Last Chance Detectives, are probably better for ages 7 and up.
The Last Chance Detectives Series
These are from the makers of Adventures in Odyssey (which we have tried but my kids did not enjoy). You can tell they are from the same makers as there are definite similarities but the mystery in this series held our attention better than Adventures in Odyssey. This in not really an audiobook but more of an audio drama. Can you tell our family likes mysteries?!?
Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing Series
Surprisingly, again, we have never read these books. We tried the first 2 books in the series on our recent road trip and really enjoyed both. I wished I had checked out more from the library. I tried these and the classic Ramona series and we ended up enjoying these more because we liked Judy Blume’s voice better as a narrator. The narrator for the Ramona series had an irritating voice which kind of wrecked the listening experience for us even though the stories are really cute and entertaining.
Boxcar Children Series
These are classics in my book and we’ve enjoyed listening to many of the stories on our road trips. There are many to choose from so just pick the ones that sound interesting to you, we don’t have any favorites in particular as a family.
The Penderwicks Series
This series was recommended to us by my daughter’s 1st grade teacher and we really enjoyed listening to the series on our road trip a couple summers ago. Another classic series!
For more ideas on non-technology activities to do on long road trips hop on over to view our list of 12 NON-TECHNOLOGY ROAD TRIP ACTIVITIES FOR KIDS or our post on Top Podcasts for Families.
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