‘Maggie’ Takes Flight on Audiobook: Listen to Chapter One Performed by Audie Winner Tavia Gilbert!
Marquee accolades and awards for storyteller Tavia Gilbert include a Grammy Award nomination, Booklist Magazine Narrator of the Year, and Audie Award Winner for Best Female Narrator of the Year.
Listen to Chapter One Performed by Tavia Gilbert!
Download Maggie wherever great audiobooks are sold, including Audible
GRAIN VALLEY, KAN. — It all began with an email, inspired by a fleeting thought. The outcome was so extraordinary, that even now the story of how Maggie Vaults Over the Moon became an audiobook performed by acclaimed narrator Tavia Gilbert seems almost miraculous.
It was precisely the type of miracle that Maggie's grandma would approve of.
Audie Awards are the audiobook industry’s highest honor, equivalent to the Oscars or the Emmy Awards. Tavia Gilbert earned Best Female Narrator of the Year honors in 2017 and has garnered many more awards since then.
To this day, author Grant Overstake never grows tired of witnessing to the tale. When he speaks to students about pursuing their creative aspirations, he highlights the importance of writing “bold emails” and encourages them to do so themselves.
Maggie Vaults Over the Moon follows the story of the wholesome and gritty Maggie, a Kansas teenager, as she navigates through school, life on her family's farm, and her dreams of becoming a pole-vaulter. The book was republished in 2021 as a classroom reader with chapter questions by Dr. Melissa White and a foreword authored by Olympic champion Katerina Stefanidi. The audio is the perfect way to bring the story to life.
“Tavia Gilbert brings Maggie and the many characters of Grain Valley to life with a passion that just doesn’t let you go,” Overstake says. “I can’t express how great her performance is. You just have to experience it for yourself.”
It all began in 2014, when the author was looking for the right someone to record his novel, which had been published by CreateSpace in 2012.
The book received rave reviews from Olympians and quickly became a sensation in the pole-vault community. And also in rural Kansas, because of the story’s depiction of farm life and community. The Augusta Public Library built a replica of Grain Valley when the author came to speak on Author’s Day. In Wichita, the book was chosen as a Battle of the Books selection by the area’s Catholic Schools.
The author was enjoying the modest success of his print edition and ebook and readers were responding enthusiastically to the story.
“But I knew Maggie would be a good audiobook, and so one day I googled ‘Kansas, Audiobook Narrator’ and up popped the name Tavia Gilbert, so I clicked on the link and that’s when I discovered who she was…
He learned that Tavia Gilbert wasn’t an audiobook narrator from Kansas, but that she had narrated a novel set in Kansas, one of over 700 solo, multi-cast, and full-cast audiobooks she has performed with virtually every publisher. And, that her voice acting has earned her numerous nominations and awards, now including the coveted Audie Award for Best Female Narrator in the entire industry!
The pole-vault community rallied behind Maggie’s Audiobook crowdfunding campaign.
It was as if he’d landed on the audiobook equivalent of the home page of a Meryl Streep or Emma Thompson, so the author thought to himself, ‘No way is she going to be interested’ in a story that he’d indie-published. In that moment, he faced a critical decision: to believe in Maggie or not. Her future was at his fingertip.
“I was about to click away from Tavia’s site and search elsewhere, when I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Not so fast. Maybe she’s mentoring someone or knows someone just starting out who might be interested in reading a book from a first-time author.’”
And so, instead of clicking away, he wrote the star an email that was, he swears, without guile or expectation, but rather just a sincere congratulations on her fine career, a bit about the book, and a reference request.
He had no way of knowing what was to follow, but that email would change his fledgling career and bring life to Grain Valley, Kansas forever.
“A few days later,” the author recalled, “Tavia got back to me very graciously saying that she was intrigued by my story and would I please send her a .pdf copy. Of course I did and several weeks later, I received a second email with lots of exclamation marks! She loved the story! She loved Maggie’s bold and courageous character! She had been a farm kid like Maggie and showed sheep herself!”
Tavia eagerly agreed to narrate the book as a passion project in her own studio, but the production would have to wait in line due to her contractual obligations to the big publishers who were banking on her talent to raise their books to the national best-sellers lists. Of course, we said yes, of course we can wait for you, Tavia! It turned out to be more than a year before she could devote herself to the story."
“Gilbert's splendid portrayals of Maggie's real-life coach, teammates, and parents, as well as the P.A. announcements at her school, will thoroughly engage listeners…. Most engaging is Gilbert's portrayal of Maggie's spirited grandmother, who offers her understanding and comfort.” — AudioFile Review
We think Maggie is a great story, but don’t take our word for it. Download the free e-book and read it yourself, and we think you’ll agree that Maggie an outstanding role model for your middle school students. For a limited time, save 33% off orders of 10 or more books with free shipping. Download a free ebook by clicking this image (pdf).
In the meantime, the seeds of a second miracle had begun in the form of a crowd funding campaign created to raise funds to pay for the audiobook production. The response from the pole-vault community was over the moon, including a donation of not one, but two green Skypoles from Gill Athletics, which are the same poles used by Maggie in her vaulting.
Other giveaways included a subscription to Vaulter Magazine, a custom painting by Phillip Carrero, and several camp spots at pole-vault camps across the nation. It was an amazing fundraising campaign and we reached our goal within a month!
When the audiobook was completed in 2015, it was Tavia who called Blackstone Audio to see to it that Maggie Vaults Over the Moon would be distributed globally alongside her other works, and so the miracle that began with a mouse-click was done.
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The new classroom reader edition has engaging chapter questions by Dr. Melissa White, a Language Arts Teacher and Mental Performance Consultant with a Doctorate in Sport Psychology. The story’s reading level and social-emotional themes align perfectly with ELA and SEL learning objectives. It’s a great read-together book with everything you need for an unforgettable and unifying classroom experience.
“A fine young adult novel about perseverance in sports and in life!” — KIRKUS REVIEWS