- Read by: Arika Escalona, on a 2010 Trout Lake Media recording running ten hours and twenty-nine minutes.
- At its heart: orphanhood and belonging, an imagination that will not be managed, small-town friendship, foster family.
- Vibe: warm, talkative, episodic and easy to resume.
- Short version: a classic that rewards patience, on a listing whose reviews are almost entirely about the printed novel.
This listing repeats the title in the series field and leaves the number blank. So the audiobook tells you it belongs to a sequence called Anne of Green Gables, which you could have guessed, and declines to say where in that sequence it falls. The information exists on the page, but you have to go looking for it in a review: Sarah Johnson, writing in December 2016, states plainly that this is the first book in the series. A reader has done the cataloguing the store did not.
Cuthberts Wanted a Boy and Got Anne
Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables, on Prince Edward Island, send for a boy orphan to help on the farm and receive an eleven-year-old redheaded girl instead. That mistake is the entire engine. Anne Shirley can, in the description's phrase, talk anyone under the table, and the book's method is to let that talking work on two people who had not planned to be worked on. Her sunny nature and quirky imagination win over reluctant foster parents; her feisty spirit then draws friends and trouble in roughly equal measure.
Sarah Johnson's review is also, incidentally, the clearest illustration of how rough this page is. The text runs words together where line breaks were lost, so the author's name collides with the next sentence and the star rating collides with the paragraph after that. It is still the most informative entry here, laying out the setup, the arrival, and the temperaments of both Cuthberts. But between a jammed review and an empty series number, the record around this recording has clearly been assembled rather than checked. Small things, individually. Taken together they are the reason a reader has to reconstruct basic facts about a book that has sold more than fifty million copies.
Escalona's Credit Is Nearly All We Get
Arika Escalona is credited with ten hours and twenty-nine minutes, released by Trout Lake Media on August 24, 2010. That single line is nearly everything the page discloses about the recording itself. A novel whose central character is defined by her talking is unusually dependent on a reader's stamina and range: Anne monologues, and a performer has to sustain that without exhausting a listener across the full length of the recording. It is a genuine test of a solo reading, and the credit is where the page's account of it stops.
Trout Lake Media offers nothing about which text was used, and on a novel of this vintage that is not a trivial omission. The description mentions that Montgomery wrote it at her window, overlooking the fields of Cavendish, and that more than fifty million copies have sold since. What it does not mention is whether this recording is complete, whether anything has been modernized, or what edition sits behind it. For a first-time listener that will not matter. For a parent choosing a version to keep, it might, and nothing short of buying and pressing play will settle it. A publisher that specialized in this material would say so somewhere on the page; this one says only its name and an August 2010 date.
Patochette's Five Stars Praise a Cardboard Box
One of the five reviews on this page is about a cardboard box. Filed from France in September 2025, Patochette's entry reports that the book arrived in perfect condition, well packaged and matching its description. Five stars, awarded to a courier. It sits in the same column as the ratings holding up the badge above, on a page selling a file rather than an object, and nothing else here shows so plainly how little of this reception was ever about the recording.
Ten Hours of Bedtimes Forgive a Skipped Night
In fairness, the rest of the column earns its enthusiasm. Kenya Starflight's February 2021 entry is the most honest thing here: never got around to it as a child, assumed it would be dull, came to it as an adult and regretted the delay, calling it delightful, hilarious and sweet, and a classic that works at any age. btv praises the story as empowering for girls and singles out the scenery of Canada rendered in vivid language. Yogita, writing from India, offers five words. All of them are about reading a novel.
Kenya Starflight's route in also flags the real question, which is age. The listing files this under children's audiobooks and tags it Literature and Fiction, and the protagonist is eleven. Ten hours of dense, description-heavy prose, carried along by Anne's elaborate vocabulary, is a substantial ask for a young listener, and the adult reviewers here are the ones reporting the strongest experience. Treat the children's filing as an indication of subject rather than of difficulty.
Parents planning to share it should also weigh the shape of the thing. This is an episodic novel, built from incidents rather than a single arc, which makes it forgiving of interruption and easy to resume, an advantage the format handles well. The trouble Anne draws is domestic rather than dangerous, the emotional register stays warm, and nothing in the description signals content anyone would need to screen. What it does demand is patience with a talkative child, which is precisely the demand the Cuthberts are also under. Ten hours also divides neatly into a term's worth of bedtimes, and because the incidents close off individually, a night skipped costs you nothing you cannot pick up again. Few long children's books are as forgiving of an irregular schedule as this one.
Newcomers Expecting a Brisk Adventure Should Reset
Newcomers who expect a brisk children's adventure should reset. The pleasure here is conversation, small-town social life and a personality colliding with a household, none of which moves quickly. Newcomers hoping the listing will guide them through the series will also be on their own, since the number field is empty and only a reviewer's aside establishes that this is the starting point at all.
Children who like being read to at length, adults returning to something they skipped, and anyone who wants a warm book with real wit in it are all well served, and ten hours and twenty-nine minutes with Arika Escalona is a substantial stretch of company. The reviews are unanimous about the novel even when they are describing packaging. Play it for a household that has time to give it, and the talking that exhausted Marilla will do its work on you too.
How long is the audiobook and who reads it?
Ten hours and twenty-nine minutes, narrated by Arika Escalona for Trout Lake Media and released in August 2010. That credit is essentially all the page discloses about the recording, on a novel whose heroine talks almost continuously and therefore leans hard on a single reader.
Is the audiobook suitable for young children?
The listing files it under children's audiobooks, but a recording of this length, dense with description and elaborate vocabulary, is a long sitting for a young listener. The adult reviewers here report the strongest reactions. It works best read aloud in stages to a child who enjoys length.
Why is one of the reviews about packaging?
Because the review column pools responses to editions other than this recording. A September 2025 entry filed from France awards five stars for a book that arrived in perfect condition and well wrapped, which describes a parcel rather than a file, and it counts toward the same visible column.
