THE FUTURE OF US

Mary Ellen Cravens and Steven Kaplan team up to read this story about two teens in 1996 who install a CD-ROM from AOL and find themselves on a Web site called Facebook, which allows them to glimpse their lives 15 years in the future. The chapters alternate points of view between Emma (read by Cravens) and Josh (read by Kaplan), and the narrators keep the tones of both characters fairly consistent, with Emma as an excitable teenage girl, and Josh as her more grounded friend. Cravens and Kaplan make convincing teenagers, and they handle the adult voices admirably as well. The teens’ moms and dads—with just the right tones of maturity in their voices—sound like stereotypical overprotective parents. E.N. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2011]