In Week 4 of this SYNC season, listeners can take a pair of excursions into history that give context to political realities. Thank you, Post Hypnotic Press and L.A. Theatre Works, for making these brief, powerful, and dynamically narrated audiobooks available to teens. Future leadership and civic engagement is an outcome of informed understanding of the past. In addition, this week’s pair of free audiobooks gives listeners experience with expository nonfiction and with stagecraft. Both experiences can support nascent authors and develop more flexible reading capacities.

Week 3’s free audiobooks offer several kinds of literary and performance experiences. SYNC participants can select one or two teen novels this week, both of which are grounded in a classic story. Thank you, ECW Press, for the full-cast selection WHEN MORNING COMES, which author Arushi Raina builds on the roots of the Romeo and Juliet story of ill-fated love. We’re also grateful to Recorded Books for their contribution of the Pura Belpré Honor-winning NEVER LOOK BACK, a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story with Afro-Latinx characters by Lilliam Rivera and performed by a pair of narrators.