Audiobook · read by volunteers
Johnny Crow’s Party
L. Leslie Brooke (1862–1940)
Read by Kara Shallenberg (1969-2023) · 1 chapter · 3 min
About the book
A kangaroo who tries to paint the roses blue, a crowd of creatures behaving in the most unlikely ways, and a host who takes it all in stride: Johnny Crow’s Party is a picture book made for reading aloud, and here it is made for listening. The rhymes bounce along with a cheerful, nonsensical logic, and each animal arrives with its own small piece of mischief. Children who know the earlier adventure in Johnny Crow’s garden will be glad to find the same bird again, while newcomers need no introduction at all. The recording lasts only a few minutes, which makes it ideal for bedtime, a car journey or a quiet moment between two games. If you can, look at the original drawings while you listen: the pictures are half the joke, and the voice of the reader carries every silly scene with warmth and a perfect sense of timing.
Introduction
L. Leslie Brooke, born in 1862 and died in 1940, was an English illustrator who spent his career drawing for children. Johnny Crow’s Party appeared in 1907 as a sequel to his earlier picture book about the crow’s garden, and like it, it relies on a very simple recipe: a handful of short verses, a procession of animals, and drawings full of humour and gentle detail. The text is almost secondary to the images, yet it has the rhythm of a nursery rhyme, which is exactly why it works so well when spoken.
This is a book from the Edwardian age of picture books, when artists such as Brooke were treating the children’s page as a serious place for wit and craftsmanship. Its charm lies in understatement. Nothing dreadful happens, nothing is explained, and the animals simply carry on with their peculiar business as though it were perfectly normal.
The recording is a single chapter lasting only a few minutes, read by a LibriVox volunteer, Kara Shallenberg. It is short enough to be played again and again, which small listeners will almost certainly demand. Today it offers something rare: a few minutes of unhurried silliness, free of screens and noise, that a parent and child can share, and that adults will find they enjoy just as much as the youngest in the room. Because the recording is so brief, it can easily be paired with other nursery favourites for a longer bedtime session, or with a look at the original drawings.
Public domain
L. Leslie Brooke died in 1940: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text