We’ve come a long way—this week making it 16 weeks and 32 free audiobooks—since April. Thanks to Scholastic and to Naxos AudioBooks, this 16th week brings characters, authors, and narrators you’ll want to keep in your listening life.

Our penultimate week of this SYNC season brings a pair of very different kids with character, thanks to free audiobooks from Zonderkidz and Tantor. There are plenty of contrasts between the author-narrated memoir published just this year and the nearly 75-year-old classic novel newly narrated last year. In both listening experiences, however, you’ll get to know young people who consciously put themselves onto distinct paths forward in their lives.