Joan Aiken Audiobooks

Children's stories that behave like spells, chief among them A Necklace of Raindrops

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Who is Joan Aiken?

Joan Aiken, born in 1924, was an English writer who made her name in two territories most authors never manage to hold at once: supernatural fiction and alternative history novels for children. Rather than writing the world as it was, she wrote it slightly askew, and generations of young readers loved her for it. Her standing was formally recognised in 1999, when she was awarded an MBE for services to children’s literature.

The prizes tell their own story. The Whispering Mountain, published in 1968, won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, an award judged by a panel of British children’s writers, and was also a commended runner-up for the Carnegie Medal, which recognises the year’s best children’s book by a British writer. In 1972 she added an Edgar Allan Poe Award, for Night Fall, to the list. She died in 2004, leaving a body of work that still feels entirely her own.

Joan Aiken in audiobooks

Aiken in audio is a treat for families precisely because her imagination was so visual and so odd. Our catalogue features A Necklace of Raindrops, and the title alone captures what she did best: images that sound like spells, and stories that treat the impossible as perfectly reasonable. Her supernatural leanings give a narrator plenty to play with, and children’s listening thrives on exactly that kind of texture.

For UK households she is also, simply, part of the furniture of British children’s writing – an MBE-recognised figure whose work rewards being heard aloud. Played at bedtime or on a long drive, she casts precisely the spell you hope for.