06-11-24

9hrs 13min

Abridgement

Audio Theater

Genre

Fiction/Coming-of-Age

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06-11-24

9hrs 13min

Abridgement

Audio Theater

Genre

Fiction/Coming-of-Age

Description

“The narrators of this fraught coming-of-age story are excellent…The gospel music of the Arise Ensemble enhances the listening experience. The audio drama has moments of remarkable verisimilitude: from the play-by-play announcing of a basketball game to the whirring of a helicopter in Vietnam. Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
Winner of the 2019 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award
Finalist for the Audie Award for Best Narration in Young Adult Books 
A BookClubz of Book of the Month Selection

Set in 1968 after the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this immersive audio dramatization, inspired by the author’s own experiences, features an award-winning cast of 15 actors, in a fast-paced, suspenseful coming-of-age story.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

At his now integrated junior high, TJ resents that teachers tell him he must get to know his Black classmates, yet he understands that staying out of trouble can only help assure him an all-important spot on the basketball team. At school, a violent confrontation with Leon, the tough new kid in 7th grade, lands them in the principal’s office. And at home, Ray ropes him into building a fence that will send the Washingtons a message that they’re not welcome. 

But the fence can’t quiet the sounds of unfamiliar music floating over the fence nor hide the strength and beauty of his new classmate, Ivy Washington, who fiercely stands up for what she believes in.

Over time, TJ begins to question the lessons he’s learned at home and decides to accept Dr. Washington’s invitation to visit their family. Devastated when his poor grades and bad behavior keep him from the basketball team, TJ turns to the doctor, a former athlete, who coaches him for the track team, teaching him how to throw the shot put.

When TJ’s secret visits to the Washingtons are discovered, and a series of escalating hate crimes point to Ray, TJ is forced to make a defining choice that will forever change his life.

Performed by Dani Martineck, Dion Graham, Tavia Gilbert, Johnny Heller, Kevin R. Free, Shayna Small, Ari Fliakos, Michael Crouch, Kirby Heyborne, Graham Halstead, Peter Berkrot, Thérèse Plummer, Brittany Pressley, John Wright, and Sheila Brown Kinnard, playing the role inspired by her mother, Josephine Brown. 

Grant Overstake, a storyteller and educator, draws from his background as a former Miami Herald sports writer and decathlon All-American to write authentic sports themed novels of raw emotion. Grant and his wife, Claire, sing in the multicultural ARISE Ensemble, who’s music is featured in this program.

An award-winning producer and director with over 400 titles to her credit, May Wuthrich is a former actor with a background in traditional book publishing and book-to-screen script development.

Presented by Grain Valley Publishing 

“The gospel music of the ARISE Ensemble enhances the listening experience. The audio drama has moments of remarkable verisimilitude: from the play-by-play announcing of a basketball game to the whirring of a helicopter in Vietnam. Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener.” —AudioFile (Earphones Award winner) 

Praise

“The narrators of this fraught coming-of-age story are excellent…The gospel music of the Arise Ensemble enhances the listening experience. The audio drama has moments of remarkable verisimilitude: from the play-by-play announcing of a basketball game to the whirring of a helicopter in Vietnam. Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” AudioFile

“A deftly-crafted, thought-provoking, and solid work of YA historical fiction. Unreservedly recommended for both school and community library YA fiction collections.” Midwest Book Review

“Puts the themes of To Kill a Mockingbird into overdrive…Unfinching…A novel for our times.” BookClubz

“Historical fiction at its finest.” Nancy Julien Kopp, contributor to A Children’s Book of Bedtime Verse

“The casting is perfect and the audio elements like music, choir, and sound effects give the story an authentic boost…[that] reminded me of old radio drama series but even better.” Leslie M. Martino, educator, education consultant, adjunct professor, and author, audio review

“The excellent, fearless performances, especially Dani Martineck as TJ, Johnny Heller as Uncle Ray, and Dion Graham as Dr. Washington…vividly bring the grim truths of America’s legacy of racial oppression to life, but the light of kindness and hope is always shining in this moving story of change.” Maryrose Wood, award–winning author, audio review

“One of the most popular books in my classroom library. The questions it raises about race, class, and family resonate with young women and men encountering a world with injustice and conflict.” Dave McIntire, Kansas History Teacher of the Year, Pembroke Hill School

“Brought to life by a series of finely drawn characters, the book offers readers, particularly teens, a chance to think about some of the most important issues facing our society today.” Mark Potok, former senior fellow, Southern Poverty Law Center

“The perfect book to spur frank discussions about whiteness with teens and young adults, offering insights into the fear and hate of white supremacy and a model of how a white person can change and challenge what they think they know about race. This book will provoke meaningful discussions in the classroom.” Jenna Chandler-Ward, co-founder, Teaching While White

“Set in an explosive moment in America’s racial history, this coming-of-age story prompted me to consider my own moral courage. What choices would I have made if I were in TJ’s shoes? I was on the edge of my seat, turning the pages and rooting for TJ as he navigated his young life with increasing clarity.” Debby Irving, author of Waking Up White

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Details
More Information
Language English
Release Day Jun 10, 2024
Release Date June 11, 2024
Release Date Machine 1718064000
Imprint Grant Overstake
Provider Grant Overstake
Categories Teen & Young Adult, History & Culture, Literature & Fiction
Author Bio
Grant Overstake

Grant Overstake, author and former Miami Herald staff writer, has written two novels on important themes for young people. His premier novel, Maggie Vaults Over the Moon, received widespread critical acclaim for its focus on grief and recovery from loss. The Real Education of TJ Crowley explores the thorny issue of race and relationships between students during the Civil Rights era.

May Wuthrich

Award-winning producer and director, May Wuthrich is a former actor with a background in traditional book publishing and book to screen script development. With over 400 audiobooks to her credit, she’s had the privilege of collaborating with an impressive roster of talent, including Pulitzer Prize–winners, as well as other award-winning authors.

Narrator Bio
Brittany Pressley

Brittany Pressley has won several Earphones Awards as well as the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration in 2018. She has recorded over one hundred titles and has received several nominations for American Library Association’s annual list of Amazing Audiobooks for Young Adults. She is also an accomplished singer-songwriter and voice actress. Her voice can be heard on national and international TV and radio commercials as well as several animated series and video games. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

Dion Graham

Dion Graham is an award-winning narrator named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine. He has been a recipient of the prestigious Audie Award numerous times, as well as Earphones Awards, the Publishers Weekly Listen Up Awards, IBPA Ben Franklin Awards, and the ALA Odyssey Award. He was nominated in 2015 for a Voice Arts Award for Outstanding Narration. He is also a critically acclaimed actor who has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, with an MFA degree in acting.

Tavia Gilbert

Tavia Gilbert is an acclaimed narrator of more than four hundred full-cast and multivoice audiobooks for virtually every publisher in the industry. Named the 2018 Voice of Choice by Booklist magazine, she is also winner of the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has earned numerous Earphones Awards, a Voice Arts Award, and a Listen-Up Award. Audible.com has named her a Genre-Defining Narrator: Master of Memoir. In addition to voice acting, she is an accomplished producer, singer, and theater actor. She is also a producer, singer, photographer, and a writer, as well as the cofounder of a feminist publishing company, Animal Mineral.

Kirby Heyborne

Kirby Heyborne is a musician, actor, and professional narrator. Noted for his work in teen and juvenile audio, he has garnered over twenty Earphones Awards. His audiobook credits include Jesse Kellerman’s The Genius, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, and George R. R. Martin’s Selections from Dreamsongs.

Johnny Heller

Johnny Heller, winner of numerous Earphones and Audie Awards, was named a “Golden Voice” by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has been a Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Award winner from 2008 through 2013 and he has been named a top voice of 2008 and 2009 and selected as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine.

Peter Berkrot

Peter Berkrot, winner of Audie and Earphones Awards for narration, is a stage, screen, and television actor and acting coach. He has narrated over 450 works that span a range of genres, including fiction, nonfiction, thriller, and children’s titles. His audiobook credits include works of Alan Glynn, Eric Van Lustbader, Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz. In film and television, he appeared in Caddyshack, America’s Most Wanted, and Unsolved Mysteries. He performs in regional and New York theaters and directs the New Voices acting school.

Thérèse Plummer

Thérèse Plummer is an actor, award-winning voice-over artist, and counselor. She has won eighteen AudioFile Earphones Awards and has been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. She has appeared in a variety of television and film roles. As a counselor for adolescents, she spent five years using drama therapy techniques in individual and group settings.

Ari Fliakos

Ari Fliakos is an actor with experience in television, radio, film, theater, and voice-overs. He has earned four Earphones Awards, and his narration of Seth Patrick’s Reviver won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration for paranormal fiction. On screen, he is best-known for his roles in Law & Order, Pills, and Company K.

Michael Crouch

Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.

Graham Halstead

Graham Halstead, an Earphones Award and Audie Award–winning narrator, is a professionally trained actor and voice artist. As an actor, he has worked internationally in Edinburgh and London, as well as at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. His youthful, easy-flowing voice can be heard on television and radio voicing spots for Airborne and Allegra.

Shayna Small

Shayna Small is an actress, singer, and educator based in New York, where she received her BFA in Drama from the Juilliard School. She has worked across a variety of media including theater, film and tv, music and voice-over.

Kevin R. Free

Kevin R. Free is an audiobook narrator and the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and several AudioFile best narrations of the year selections. Known for his work with young-adult novels, he has read titles by Rick Riordan, Walter Dean Myers, and Joe Haldeman. In 2011 he was named a Best Voice in Young Adult and Fantasy from AudioFile magazine for his narration of Myers’ The Cruisers: Checkmate.

Overview

Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
Winner of the 2019 J. Donald & Bertha Coffin Memorial Book Award
Finalist for the Audie Award for Best Narration in Young Adult Books 
A BookClubz of Book of the Month Selection

Set in 1968 after the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this immersive audio dramatization, inspired by the author’s own experiences, features an award-winning cast of 15 actors, in a fast-paced, suspenseful coming-of-age story.

With his father’s mysterious disappearance and his brother Ronnie enlisting in the Vietnam War, 13-year-old TJ Crowley is left alone with his racist, unstable mother, Kate. The newly enforced Fair Housing Act results in the unthinkable for the Crowleys when a Black family, headed by the eminent Dr. Washington, crosses the racial red line and moves in next door. Kate is quick to warn TJ that their new neighbors are strictly off-limits and makes a panicked call to beg Ray, her old flame, to travel to their home in Wichita Kansas to help deal with “the problem next door.”

At his now integrated junior high, TJ resents that teachers tell him he must get to know his Black classmates, yet he understands that staying out of trouble can only help assure him an all-important spot on the basketball team. At school, a violent confrontation with Leon, the tough new kid in 7th grade, lands them in the principal’s office. And at home, Ray ropes him into building a fence that will send the Washingtons a message that they’re not welcome. 

But the fence can’t quiet the sounds of unfamiliar music floating over the fence nor hide the strength and beauty of his new classmate, Ivy Washington, who fiercely stands up for what she believes in.

Over time, TJ begins to question the lessons he’s learned at home and decides to accept Dr. Washington’s invitation to visit their family. Devastated when his poor grades and bad behavior keep him from the basketball team, TJ turns to the doctor, a former athlete, who coaches him for the track team, teaching him how to throw the shot put.

When TJ’s secret visits to the Washingtons are discovered, and a series of escalating hate crimes point to Ray, TJ is forced to make a defining choice that will forever change his life.

Performed by Dani Martineck, Dion Graham, Tavia Gilbert, Johnny Heller, Kevin R. Free, Shayna Small, Ari Fliakos, Michael Crouch, Kirby Heyborne, Graham Halstead, Peter Berkrot, Thérèse Plummer, Brittany Pressley, John Wright, and Sheila Brown Kinnard, playing the role inspired by her mother, Josephine Brown. 

Grant Overstake, a storyteller and educator, draws from his background as a former Miami Herald sports writer and decathlon All-American to write authentic sports themed novels of raw emotion. Grant and his wife, Claire, sing in the multicultural ARISE Ensemble, who’s music is featured in this program.

An award-winning producer and director with over 400 titles to her credit, May Wuthrich is a former actor with a background in traditional book publishing and book-to-screen script development.

Presented by Grain Valley Publishing 

“The gospel music of the ARISE Ensemble enhances the listening experience. The audio drama has moments of remarkable verisimilitude: from the play-by-play announcing of a basketball game to the whirring of a helicopter in Vietnam. Performed by a gifted cast, this slice of our history stays with the listener.” —AudioFile (Earphones Award winner) 

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