Clara’s Verdict
Children’s audiobooks succeed on a very simple metric: does the child want to listen again immediately? On that measure, Twintastic – the second book in Zoe Antoniades’s Cally and Jimmy series – is a resounding success. Read by the author herself, these four short stories about troublemaking twins and their gloriously chaotic Greek grandmother are funny in the right way: not condescending, not reliant on adult irony, but genuinely, properly funny for the children listening. The series has a 4.9-star rating from 36 reviews, and the response from families is uniformly enthusiastic. At just over two hours, it is perfectly sized for a long car journey or a stretched bedtime.
About the Audiobook
The four stories in Twintastic cover a beach holiday, a school sports day, a Halloween trick-or-treat gone wrong, and a school theft that Cally and Jimmy help to unravel. In each, the dynamic is consistent: Jimmy creates the chaos, Cally attempts to manage it, and their Greek granny – the book’s secret weapon – either compounds the mayhem or rescues everyone with the particular authority of grandmothers who have seen considerably worse. The Greek cultural detail is woven in lightly but affectionately, giving the book a flavour distinct from the generic school-story landscape.
Antoniades writes with pace and economy. The stories don’t overstay their welcome; each has a satisfying shape, a clear comic escalation, and a resolution that feels earned rather than contrived. Jimmy’s disasters are inventive rather than merely naughty, and Cally’s attempts to keep order are rendered with the affectionate exasperation of someone who loves her brother unreservedly even when she’d quite like to be somewhere else. The Halloween story, in particular, has a lovely structural twist.
The Narration
Antoniades reading her own work is a genuine asset. She performs the grandmother with evident glee, and her voice for Jimmy has just enough outrage and mischief to distinguish him from Cally without the distinction becoming a caricature. The pacing is well-judged – quick enough to hold children’s attention, unhurried enough for the comedy to land. The audio production is bright and clean, with good sound quality throughout. This is the kind of audiobook where you can tell the person narrating it loves these characters and has been performing them aloud for some time.
What Readers Say
The reviews for Twintastic have an unmistakable quality: they are written by grandparents, parents, and children with equal enthusiasm. SuszyQ writes that her grandchildren “love them and are always reading them.” K Morgan reports that her son read the book twice on the day it arrived. PC from North London notes that her daughter “has read them more than once” and praises the illustrations alongside the storytelling. The common theme is return: children go back to these stories, which is perhaps the most meaningful endorsement a children’s book can receive.
Who Should Listen?
Perfect for children aged six to ten, particularly those who enjoy sibling-dynamic humour, school stories with a mischievous streak, and characters who feel genuinely real rather than instructively perfect. The series rewards listening in order but works well as a standalone introduction. For parents, it has the particular virtue of being entertaining rather than merely educational, which makes the repeat listens considerably more bearable. Ideal for the school run, long journeys, or the ongoing negotiation around bedtime.
Listen to Cally and Jimmy: Twintastic on Audible UK – find it via this link. Also available on Kobo, Scribd, and Storytel.
