Music » Story Music

The jewel in the crown in the Music for Little People catalog, Gift of the Tortoise is stunning in its beauty and uncompromising in its delivery of excellence. Expressed from the viewpoint of a very wise tortoise, the lush harmonies of Ladysmith Black Mambazo are supported by renowned guitarist Johnny Clegg and storyteller Gcina Mhlophe, creating a captivating blend of Zulu lore, South African history, and that country's brave optimism in the post-Apartheid era. As the drama unfolds, the listener is drawn into the spell cast by this marvelous group of players as they carry out the chant of ancestral names on "Two Shelleni," the folk legend of the "Boy Who Turned into a Cat," and the classic "Mbube (the Lion Sleeps Tonight)." --Paige La Grone

No Suess can summon slumber like the perfect-for-bedtime If I Ran the Zoo (here with accompanying tracks). From the top, voice actor Marvin Miller spins gold from Seuss's splendid rhyming prose, where "a gasket, a gootch, a gusset, and a gherkin" and other such creatures populate the zany zoo of the author's imagination. Following this hit parade of critters is the ever-loving fun songbook from The Cat in the Hat, featuring Seuss's brilliant lyrics married to the tiptop score of Eugene Poddany, who also had a hand in composing the Grinch tunes. The Cat's capers come to life in music, introducing a marvelous cast of characters from Benjiman B. s;Bicklebaum to Little Sally Spingle Sporn and Uncle Terrwilliger. By the time the "Yawn Song" wends it's way from the speakers, bedtime has become the coziest moment of the day and the closing "Dr. Suess's Sleepbook" draws infectious though never bored yawns of its own. --Paige La Grone

Array

These stories are filled with memorable images, Bill Harley's trademark humor, and gentle reminders of what's really important.

Harley's first Grammy Award-nominated recording!

Harley's first Grammy Award-nominated recording!

Contains two long form stories perfect for the whole family.

"To try and recount any part of either tale in print is an impossible task, for so much of the story's charm is in how it is related--simply and eloquently, using different vocal timbres and inflections." -- Dirty Linen

Release Date: 2002-10-08, Audio CD, Big Idea

Release Date: 1994-04-12, Audio CD, Varese Sarabande

Release Date: 2001-01-09, Audio CD, Big Idea

Jessica Harper stretches her big, broad voice over three musical styles--jazz, reggae, and calypso--on Inside Out for a sound, rich and lush, that's unmistakably hers, love it or leap right over it on your CD changer. Same rule applies to her lyrics, which leave listeners feeling as though they ought to have signed a waiver: spin this disc and plan to be gone awhile, in effect plucked from your own habitat and planted squarely in hers. Fortunately, it's a place most parents will find familiar, comfortably so. A bundle of songs on Inside Out, which plays like a postscript to 2000's Rhythm in My Shoes, bring us into a bustling household where the family pet is a shoe-chewing, jazz-ditty-inspiring "Little Brown Dog Named Joe" and the breakfast-table chitchat seems lifted from our own kitchens and set to pleasing rhythms. For instance, "Four Boys Named Jordan" opens with a little girl, Elizabeth, explaining her class-seating chart. Sprinkled around the room, sometimes in confusing clusters, are--you guessed it--four fellas who share the same name. On "Lizzy's Do's and Don't's" you can practically hear the disaffected drumming of fingertips--it's Lizzy's plea to her mom not to hide her candy up high and put nuts in the apple pie, among other exasperating day-to-day stuff. At times, the Harper household darts away from the daily grind to celebrate nothing special. "Happy Talk" reminds us, in reggae, to dream, and "Shout the Happiness" is hardly more than a joyous, island-style rant. Regardless of the mood, so much a part of this record, not one of the songs is weak musically. For young families in a funk, it's a friendly, highly original reminder to at least keep it light when you can't kick up your heels. --Tammy La Gorce

Probably Bill Harley's funniest--and certainly most outrageous--this Grammy nominated collection of stories features Harley at his most improbable and believable best.

"Harley's witty, ebullient performance will have listeners young and old laughing out loud." -- Publishers Weekly

"One of the finest family entertainers ever." -- Billboard

There are thousands upon thousands of children's albums out there, but the one that quietly left its mark with more '70s children than perhaps any other album was this disc. Free to Be...You and Me was a pet project of proud feminist Marlo Thomas (a.k.a. "That Girl"), and it was born--according to the liner notes--by the desire to provide her niece with music "to celebrate who she was and who she could be." Harry Belafonte sings "Parents Are People," ex-football great Rosie Grier offers an incredible, touching melody titled "It's All Right to Cry," and Diana Ross waxes future-positive on "When We Grow Up." A great hour of brain food for young--and not-so-young--children. --Denise Sheppard