12 Cozy Audiobooks for Your Family to Enjoy This Winter

We are always driving in December. Christmas parties, shopping for gifts, running to the store for the forgotten ingredient for Aunt Mae’s Jell-o salad.

Documentaries are often playing in the car but we also keep a steady rotation of audiobooks.  By mid-November, though?  My kids are itching for wintery audiobooks!  

(New to audiobooks? Check out my guide to this staple in our home.)

Audiobooks for the Younger Crowd

Best Christmas Pageant Ever, the classic book delighting families for nearly 50 years, is a must-listen and our first Christmas audio every year. We are lucky enough to see a local production of it every year.  

Even if you haven’t read the prior books in the Little House on the Prairie series, don’t shy away from The Long Winter. Telling the story of the Ingalls family over the long snow winter of 1880-1881, the Ingalls family struggles in their isolated area of the Dakota territory. Hardships, fight to survive…and family.

I never cared for How the Grinch Stole Christmas when I was young but watching the movie with my kids year after year has won me over. The narration by Walter Matthau makes this audiobook! 

Originally letters that P.L. Travers sent to friends and family in the 1940s, the three stories in will capture you in Aunt Sass: Christmas Stories much the way Mary Poppins does. {If you’ve only seen the Disney movie of Mary Poppins, you are missing out!! The books are a must! 

In second grade, my teacher had a rule. If we wanted her to read a chapter book after lunch, we had to sit & keep our hands to ourselves. Simple enough…except for my class. But from the opening paragraph of Mr. Popper’s Penguins, that’s exactly what I did. The adventurous Admiral Drake, the exasperated Mrs. Popper, the hilarious penguins…so begins the hilarious tales of life with penguins!  {Early elementary and up}

John, Susan, Titty, and Roger are off to the North Pole in Winter Holiday. Set in England in the 1930s, the children in this story are full of imagination and adventure. If your kids enjoy this book, there are a dozen in the series. {Middle-elementary and up}

Wintery Audiobooks for the Older Crowd

I have never understood the love for J.R.R. Tolkien until I stumbled on Letters from Father Christmas last year. Tolkien wrote stories to his children from Father Christmas. What a delight it would have been to be his children every Christmas! Each letter is entertaining with a bit of humor, a lot of magic, and a dose of love.

After Marly’s father returns from Europe in the fight of World War 2, he moves his family out of the big city in search of something simpler in Miracle on Maple Hill.

(This was the first book I checked out when I moved to a new school in fourth grade. I felt so cool choosing a book from the school library that was ‘vintage’. Funny how random memories stick with you, isn’t it?)

When Santa Fell to Earth tells the story of a reindeer’s accident that sends Santa tumbling to Earth two weeks before Christmas. A fight ensues to keep the old ways of Christmas from being discarded in favor of new ways, including snowmobiles instead of reindeer.

A Christmas Story…Yes, like the movie. I may be one of the few people who didn’t love the movie but the audiobook captured me. The narrator is a rather monotone voice, something that I usually hate but seems to fit this story well.

Richard Peck brings us another story of Grandma Dowdel {A Year Down Yonder, A Long Way from Chicago} in A Season of Gifts. Unpredictable, loving, eccentric, and a great neighbor, Grandma Dowdel is every bit as delightful in this book as she is in the rest of the trilogy.

If you have Santa-believers in your house, wait on The True Saint Nicholas: Why He Matters to Christmas.  (Keep the magic alive!) If you don’t, then this is a must-listen! The book details the life of Saint Nicholas, legends surrounding him, and his legacy.

Honorable Mentions

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