#HARRY POTTER AUDIO BOOK PROFESSIONAL#
At the age of 17, he became the youngest professional comedian in Great Britain. A native of England, Dale spent much of his childhood training for a career on the stage. "He brilliantly distinguishes characters and brings out the excitement and pacing of the narrative."ĭale's success in bringing the Harry Potter books to audio life isn't surprising, given his successful and eclectic background. "Jim Dale's recordings are worth listening to, even if you have read the books a few times," says children's-book expert Anita Silvey. Listening Library has ordered a first printing of 635,000 copies for Book 7 - 565,000 CDs, 70,000 audiocassettes - the same as it ordered for the previous book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
#HARRY POTTER AUDIO BOOK SERIES#
If you listened to the whole series straight through in your car, driving at 60 miles per hour, it would take you a loop around the United States - from New York to Seattle to Los Angeles to Dallas to Atlanta and back to the Big Apple, the Listening Library folks said.īook 7, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, is 21 hours, 38 minutes long, and consists of 17 CDs or 12 audiocassettes.
It would take five days to listen straight through the entire series, according to officials of Listening Library, the Random House division that publishes the audiobooks. The total length of the audio versions, including Book 7, is 117 hours and four minutes.
More than 5 million copies of the audiobooks have been sold since the first one was released in 1999, making them the best-selling audiobooks of all time. Overall, Dale has created more than 200 voices for the audio versions of all seven Harry Potter books. "All I can tell you is that those 134 voices (for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) hold the record so far," Dale says. This is the same highly unusual process (most audiobooks come out weeks or months after the regular versionis published) used for most of the previous Harry Potter books.
In fact, Dale holds a Guinness World Record for having created 134 different character voices for one book - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the series.Īsked if he beats his own record for voices in the final Harry Potter book, Dale replied that he's not allowed to respond until Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released at midnight Friday.ĭale finished recording the book several weeks ago, settingin motion a production frenzy designed to ensure that the audiobook is ready for release the same day as the print version. Those 30-40 voices were just a fraction of the voices he has now created for the Harry Potter series by author J.K. It was off the wall! I thought to myself, 'Who the hell can do that?'" Dale says. "The first book had 30 to 40 different voices in it. “And to start us off with Chapter 1, we think you’ll agree we have the perfect narrator… #HarryPotterAtHome.” The video shows multiple celebs excitedly preparing to read Harry Potter from their homes, and ends with the narrator of all narrators: Daniel Radcliffe.LITTLE ROCK - When Jim Dale, an award-winning Broadway actor, was asked eight years ago to narrate the audio version of the first Harry Potter book, he wasn't sure he could do it. “Surprise! We’ve got a treat for you…From today, amazing friends of the Wizarding World are going to take turns reading Harry Potter book one,” they wrote. The Wizarding World Twitter account announced the news by posting a video today, May 5th. Fanning seems to be the only non-Brit celeb reading the book, so we don’t know how she landed the gig, but we’re okay with it (and super jealous, TBH). Beckham went all out for his, wearing a Gryffindor scarf while sitting in a tall chair by a fireplace that looks eerily like the common room in the first film. The following chapters will be released week-by-week through mid-summer.įinally, we have a concrete, reoccurring thing to look forward to each week!ĭakota Fanning, David Beckham, Stephen Fry, and Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts star Eddie Redmayne will all take turns reading, among others. Radcliffe’s first chapter of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone was released today, May 5th. You can choose between watching the chosen celebrities read their assigned chapters on Wizarding World’s website or listening to their recordings on Spotify, all for free.
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