Audio NewsBriefs

This month, Emmanuel Jal's War Child: A Child Soldier's Story will publish simultaneously in print (St. Martin's) and as a retail-edition and trade-edition CD (by Macmillan Audio and Sound Library: BBC Audiobooks America, respectively). Jal, a popular hip-hop artist and an Oxfam and Amnesty International spokesman, was forced into the life of a child soldier when his mother was killed and his father became a commander in the Christian Sudanese Liberation Army. An identically titled documentary of his life won the Cadillac® Award at the Tribeca Film Festival (watch the trailer at www.emmanueljal.org). National tour and reading group guide planned.

The Association of Jewish Libraries recently launched a podcast featuring author talks, lectures on Jewish literature, panel discussions, and workshops. Listeners can hear the show online at www.jewishlibraries.org/podcast, subscribe through feed readers (via feeds.feedburner.com/ajlpodcast), receive episodes by email (via FeedBlitz), or listen to them on the phone (651-925-2538). New episodes are posted weekly.

Digital media distributor OverDrive (www.overdrive.com) recently added to its e-audiobook catalog approximately 1000 audiobooks each from Simon & Schuster and Tantor Media. Among the S. & S. titles are Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes; Tantor Media's productions include Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea and Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger.

For the first time in 13 years, audiobooks will be considered in a new "Self-Improvement Audiobook" category of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society's Books for a Better Life Awards, honoring the best self-improvement books of 2008. Finalists include Thomas L. Friedman's Hot, Flat, and Crowded (an LJ Best Audiobook) and Pema Chodron's This Moment Is the Perfect Teacher. Winners will be announced on February 23 at an awards ceremony in Manhattan.

Now available from Working Arts Video (www.workingartsvideo.com): Michael Chekhov on Theatre and the Art of Acting (ISBN 978-1-55783-531-4. $49.99), a four-CD set including A Guide to Discovery with Exercises, a 64-page booklet by Chekhov disciple Mala Powers.