THE BORROWER

The premise is promising, if a little far-fetched in an Amber-alert world: A librarian finds a young patron camped out in the library and agrees to facilitate his multi-state road trip. Lucy Hull, now 36, tells how, 10 years earlier, she hit the road with 10-year-old Ian Drake, her favorite patron at the Hannibal, Missouri, library. While the story is told by an adult female, Emily Bauer’s voice sounds more like that of 10-year-old Ian. The device of inserting passages from various children’s classics is clever, but its execution in audio form gets tiresome as parodies of IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A COOKIE and THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT go on too long. Additionally, the “Make Your Own Adventure” chapter, while clever in print, is interminable in audio. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2011]