Emiel van de Hazelhoeve

I’ll admit, I side-eyed the idea of listening to a story about a kid getting his head stuck in a soup dish—until Max Roest’s Emiel *squeaked* his way into my good graces. Roest’s performance is the audiobook equivalent of a puppy barreling into a room: all scrappy energy and zero self-awareness. His voice cracks at just the right moments, like when Emiel insists his sister *needed* to be hoisted up that flagpole (‘She was *bored*!’), and you can hear the smirk in every line. Nine Meijer, meanwhile, plays the straight woman to perfection; her delivery as Emiel’s mother is so dry it could extinguish a campfire. The contrast makes the humor land harder—like when she calmly asks, ‘Emiel, why is there a chicken in the outhouse?’ and the silence that follows is *chef’s kiss*. The production shines in its simplicity: no overdone sound effects, just crisp pacing that lets Lindgren’s writing breathe. That said, the mixing occasionally falters—Meijer’s lines sometimes feel a hair too quiet next to Roest’s exuberance, forcing me to fiddle with the volume. And while the story’s episodic structure works well for young listeners, the abrupt ending (no real resolution, just Emiel eyeing his next target) might frustrate kids who crave closure. Still, the audiobook’s greatest strength is its *physicality*—you can *hear* the wobble of the flagpole, the *clang* of the tureen. It’s a rare kids’ book that trusts its audience to delight in the *process* of chaos, not just the punchline. For parents tired of sanitized morals, and kids who’ve ever been told ‘*That’s not how we use a ladder*’, this is 73 minutes of vindication.