children's audio books?

I’m curious how future teachers might feel about audio books for children’s literature.  I understand that audio books are super convenient for the teacher to listen to them when discovering new books for the classroom. However, I feel like for children they are an easy way out.

I remember when I was in 3^rd or 4^th grade we were assigned to read phantom tollbooth, which was the longest book I’d ever even considered reading.  I was a wild child who did do much reading, and pretty much would have rather done anything besides read that particular book.  The good news for me was that my mother was a teacher, so she happened to have phantom tollbooth on a homemade audio tape.  I sneakily took the tape and listened to my mom read me the story of phantom tollbooth.  My teacher was very impressed with how quickly I had finished it and no one ever found out.

To this day I’ve never read it, and I don’t definitely don’t remember the plot.  It might be irrelevant with book summaries and reviews all over the internet, but at least students have to read in order to get the abridged version of the book.  Especially books assigned in schools, any book can be purchased or rented as an audio book.  This means that potentially children would never actually have to read anything.  Not even to mention Youtube readings and movies that convince children they know the book.  I’m curious how difficult it actually is, or if there is just a few kids like me who looked for the fast and easy way out of assigned reading.