My favorite all-time audiobook narrator is Peter Addenbrooke Thomas (June 28, 1924 – April 30, 2016). His unique voice is considered the most listened-to broadcast voice in American television and radio history.
His father was a Presbyterian minister from Wales and his mother an English schoolteacher. During his childhood, they stressed the importance of reading, education, and memorization, including Bible passages, and taught him how to project, enunciate, and communicate. His father encouraged him to paint mental pictures of words while speaking. He often read aloud to his family, which perfected his technique.
Peter Thomas Tribute 2015
The Christmas Story narrated by Peter Thomas
Some of his audiobooks include:
–Numerous books in the Smithsonian Oceanic Collection
—Incident at Hawk’s Hill
If you’re looking for a book to teach your child elocution (articulation, inflection, accent & emphasis, reading verse, voice, and gesture), this book is the best. I used it with my children.
Hi Laurie
I’m interested in teaching elocution to my high schoolers. Can I use this McGuffey’s 6th reader even if I haven’t used the prior readers? Would you recommend using book 5 first? We have used and are using Harvey’s Grammar, Visual Latin, Fitting Words and Old Western Culture (Roman Roads Media) for Language, History and Arts (broadly speaking). Can I use the readers instead of Harvey’s Grammar?
If I wanted to start with a younger child (10-11yo) that has just finished Story of the World and started Visual Latin, not done much language stuff yet, but prolific reader and lots of copywork, which reader would you recommend? What would you recommend for a resistant reader/writer?
Please bear in mind that English is a second language for us, but even though we do homeschool in Afrikaans (our home language) most of our curriculum materials are in English, because of the rich christian content that is not available in Afrikaans. Any narration/feedback/answering is done in Afrikaans, so we all, parents and children, are fully bilingual.
Thank you, so much.
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Elocution is taught in all the readers. I would just use Book Six with your high schoolers. The readers don’t teach grammar except for some punctuation. They teach literature and vocabulary. It’s hard to say, but a 10yo prob would be in Book Three. I guess I would suggest getting the whole set. Laurie