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Half Brother
- Narrated by: Daniel di Tomasso
- Length: 9 hrs and 8 mins
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Publisher's summary
For 13 years, Ben Tomlin was an only child. But all that changes when his mother brings home Zan - an eight-day-old chimpanzee. Ben’s father, a renowned behavioral scientist, has uprooted the family to pursue his latest research project: a high-profile experiment to determine whether chimpanzees can acquire advanced language skills. Ben’s parents tell him to treat Zan like a little brother. Ben reluctantly agrees. At least now he’s not the only one his father’s going to scrutinize.
It isn’t long before Ben is Zan’s favorite, and Ben starts to see Zan as more than just an experiment. His father disagrees. Soon Ben is forced to make a critical choice between what he is told to believe and what he knows to be true - between obeying his father or protecting his brother from an unimaginable fate.
Half Brother isn’t just a story about a boy and a chimp. It’s about the way families are made, the way humanity is judged, the way easy choices become hard ones, and how you can’t always do right by the people and animals you love. In the hands of master storyteller Kenneth Oppel, it’s a novel you won’t soon forget.
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Story
Last week I cut my hair, bought some boys' clothes and shoes, wrapped a large ACE bandage around my chest to flatten my fortunately-not-large breasts, and began looking for a new name. Angela Katz-McNair has never felt quite right as a girl. Her whole life is leading up to the day she decides to become Grady, a guy. While coming out as transgendered feels right to Grady, he isn't prepared for the reaction he gets from everyone else.
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Just what the doctor ordered
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 11-18-11
By: Ellen Wittlinger
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A List of Cages
- By: Robin Roe
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead, Christopher Gebauer
- Length: 8 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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When Adam Blake lands the best elective ever in his senior year, serving as an aide to the school psychologist, he thinks he's got it made. Sure, it means a lot of sitting around, which isn't easy for a guy with ADHD, but he can't complain, since he gets to spend the period texting all his friends. Then the doctor asks him to track down the troubled freshman who keeps dodging her, and Adam discovers that the boy is Julian - the foster brother he hasn't seen in five years.
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Heart wrenching!
- By Heather Shaver on 02-28-18
By: Robin Roe
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An Abundance of Katherines
- By: John Green
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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When it comes to relationships, Colin Singleton’s type is girls named Katherine. And when it comes to girls named Katherine, Colin is always getting dumped. Nineteen times, to be exact. On a road trip miles from home, this anagram-happy, washed-up child prodigy has $10,000 in his pocket, a bloodthirsty feral hog on his trail, and an overweight, Judge Judy-loving best friend riding shotgun - but no Katherines.
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struggled to finish listening
- By Daniel on 03-11-20
By: John Green
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The Lost Husband
- By: Katherine Center
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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"Dear Libby, It occurs to me that you and your two children have been living with your mother for - Dear Lord! - two whole years, and I'm writing to see if you'd like to be rescued." The letter comes out of the blue, and just in time for Libby Moran, who - after the sudden death of her husband, Danny - went to stay with her hypercritical mother. Now her crazy Aunt Jean has offered Libby an escape: a job and a place to live on her farm in the Texas Hill Country.
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wonderful story. narrator kind of a sad sack.
- By Susan Reynolds on 07-24-19
By: Katherine Center
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Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel
- By: Sara Farizan
- Narrated by: Negin Farsad
- Length: 5 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is a relief. As an Iranian American, she’s different enough; if word got out that Leila liked girls, life would be twice as hard. But when beautiful new girl Saskia shows up, Leila starts to take risks she never thought she would.
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Excellent
- By Lifeisshort on 11-03-14
By: Sara Farizan
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The Secret Side of Empty
- By: Maria E. Andreu
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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What's it like to be undocumented? High school senior M.T. knows all too well. With graduation and an uncertain future looming, she must figure out how to grow up in the only country she's ever called home... a country in which she's "illegal". M.T. was born in Argentina and brought to America as a baby without any official papers. And as questions of college, work, and the future arise, M.T. will have to decide what exactly she wants for herself, knowing someone she loves will unavoidably pay the price for it.
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Heavy topics handled well but just fell short 4 me
- By AudioBookHoe on 07-30-17
By: Maria E. Andreu
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Love Walked In
- By: Marisa de los Santos
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Award-winning poet Marisa de los Santos crafts an irresistibly touching debut novel. Love Walked In is a contemporary tale, steeped in nostalgic, cinematic charm, of love in all its forms. Unapologetically idealistic about love, Cornelia Brown appears to catch the break of a lifetime when the dashing Martin Grace, her own personal Cary Grant, comes strolling into her life. But it is Martin's connection to 11-year-old Clare Hobbes that touches Cornelia's heart in ways she never imagined.
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Dreadful audio quality
- By Marenghi on 09-16-11
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Guys Read: Funny Business
- By: Jon Scieszka, Adam Rex, Christopher Curtis, and others
- Narrated by: Michael Boatman, Kate DiCamillo, John Keating, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Funny Business is based around the theme of - what else? - humor, and if you’re familiar with Jon and the Guys Read Library, you already know what you’re in store for: 10 hilarious stories from some of the funniest writers around. Before you’re through, you’ll meet a teenage mummy; a kid desperate to take a dip in the world’s largest pool of chocolate milk; a homicidal turkey; parents who hand over their son’s room to a biker; and more.
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Awesome super funny
- By sacha on 10-03-16
By: Jon Scieszka, and others
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My Life Next Door
- By: Huntley Fitzpatrick
- Narrated by: Amy Rubinate
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not: loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, 17-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them...until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?
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A well written coming of age book
- By Ezinwanyi on 10-23-15
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Paper Things
- By: Jennifer Richard Jacobson
- Narrated by: Kate Rudd
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When Ari's mother died four years ago, she had two final wishes: that Ari and her older brother, Gage, would stay together always, and that Ari would go to Carter, the middle school for gifted students. So when eighteen-year-old Gage decided he could no longer live with their bossy guardian, Janna, Ari knew she had to go with him - even though she'd miss baking cookies with Janna and curling up to watch HGTV. What Ari didn't realize was that Gage didn't have an apartment yet.
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It's all right…
- By Bill on 04-25-16
What listeners say about Half Brother
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Penn Name
- 09-21-19
Layered
This story manages to be a coming-of-age, a family story, and also somewhat deep. It doesn't twist all of these complex ambitions perfectly, but it still does a good enough job with each of them to almost be worthy of being a classic.
It's not unlike how Flowers For Algernon is a well-crafted emotional story that raises deep questions.
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- kwdayboise (Kim Day)
- 05-22-17
Good but with distractions
The cover art on this book gives you a hint of what this book is about but not the depth and variety. It's an interesting if imperfect book around a Canadian family: a professor father, a mother working on her PhD, and son Ben. It's the 1970s and Ben is just turning 13. His family is moving across country from Toronto to Victoria so that his behavioral psychologist father can take a position at a new university. Ben and his father make the drive between the two cities and this gives some focus to the somewhat distant relationship between the two.
Shortly after they arrive at their new home, while the movers are still putting things away, Ben's mother arrives with an eight-day-old chimpanzee bundled in her arms. Ben learns that part of the reason the family has moved is so that his father can pursue a research project concerning language and primates. The father will study whether the chimp can learn American Sign Language (ASL). The 1970s setting would make this still innovative. Koko the gorilla, who learned around 1000 ASL signs, was born in 1971. In fact, many of the scientific challenges and milestones in this book are similar to those faced by Koko and her trainers.
Having the chimp in the household is an unpleasant surprise for Ben despite encouragement from his parents that he think of it as a new brother. As the story continues it describes the growing attachment between Ben and the chimp they end up naming Zan (a shortened version of Tarzan). The father hires assistants from the graduate students at the university and the training begins. But the father begins having problems getting hoped-for grants for much the same reason that some in the scientific community were skeptical of Koko's accomplishments, preferring to believe it was simply an example of the "Clever Hans" effect. They believe Zan is learning signs simply to get food or attention.
Meanwhile there are story distractions surrounding Ben's experiences at a new school with new friends, including the sister of a friend with whom he becomes infatuated. I suppose as a YA book this adds some sense of reality but I thought the book would have been cleaner without the two stories running throughout. Eventually Ben becomes the one closest to Zan while his father decides to abandon what was expected to be a 20-year project. What happens to Zan after this and how Ben responds are the key moments of the book.
The book considers quite a few serious topics, including whether we simply anthropomorphize other species or whether they have true consciousness, the treatment of laboratory animals, the dangers of people taking in pets that have so much more strength and unpredictable temperaments, and even the basics of the scientific method and double-blind studies. These made the book unique while the romance made the book just another YA book trying to relate. Still, there are emotional moments between Ben and Zan and the reader is led to root for both characters. The book wasn't as good as it could have been but an interesting read all the same.
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