And they’re wonderful. The three-disc set of video storybooks (available Nov. 22) is a great wind-down tool for a holiday-crazed little one. It includes 20 stories, most based on Caldecott-honored children’s books. Named for 19^th century illustrator and children’s publishing innovator Randolph Caldecott, they wouldn’t be here if the images weren’t child-beloved and visually stimulating. None live up to the honor more so than “The Snowy Day,” probably the most famous and treasured picture book ever. Scholastic captured Keats’ book in that it’s just as gentle, beautiful, and quiet as the book, or a real snowy day.

“Snowy Day” leads off a whole disc of Keats stories, which also includes “Whistle for Willie” and “Pet Show.” The second disc is all animal stories, including “In the Small, Small Pond,” and the wonderful cap-thieving monkeys of Esphyr Slobodkina’s “Caps for Sale.” The third disc: all duck stories. Special features: Spanish versions of a lot of the stories, and open-captioning, or as its encouragingly called, a “read-along” option. It’s three and a half hours of classic, innocent, warm toddler books, video versions of a great early library.

Either your kids will recognize and enjoy these video versions because they know the books, or the videos will make them want to read the books, which you probably have already. Or you should have already. Why don’t you own “Snowy Day” or “Caps for Sale”?

To make up for it, sort of, here’s a brief rundown of some of the better family-friendly books I’ve enjoyed lately. Nothing I write here will do justice to the authors’ work, but if you’re looking for reading recommendations, maybe I can point you and your kids in the right direction. Without further ado:

Catherynne M. Valente, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making
Oh, how I love this book. If I remember right, it started life as a series of posts, which gathered enough fans that Valente was able to crowdfund publication of her novel — which went on to become a New York Times bestseller.

The book’s success is richly deserved. I picked it up on a whim during a trip to our local bookstore, and was immediately drawn into the funny, exciting, scary, and downright moving tale of September, an impetuous 12-year-old girl from Omaha who finds herself whisked away on an adventure that combines familiar elements (anyone who’s read Lewis Carroll or the Oz books won’t be able to resist a knowing grin) with Valente’s marvelously unique prose.

It’s my favorite family book of the year, by far, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you have very young or very easily frightened kids, it might push the envelope a little in terms of peril and/or violence, but I only did some very, very light editing in the grimmest spots, and my kids were five and three when we read it. We all can’t wait for the sequel(s).

Wendy Mass, The Candymakers
Kids in a candy factory, all trying to win a contest…sounds familiar, right? Not to worry — although The Candymakers might have a troublesomely Wonka-esque premise, the book really just uses it as a springboard for an artfully constructed mystery with strong themes of friendship and trust.

The Candymakers uses four protagonists to tell its story, all kids with markedly separate personalities (girls, just wait until you get to know Daisy) and some sort of secret to be revealed. They come together during the two days leading up to the annual Confectionery Association Conference, all chosen as contestants in a big contest to create a new candy. If you’re already guessing that they’ll each learn a lesson about teamwork, you’re right, but Mass manages to add a few wrinkles to the formula.

This is a solid book for boys and girls from across the K-5 spectrum — my daughter loved it, and she just started kindergarten, and my wife is currently reading it to her third and fourth graders.

William Joyce, The Man in the Moon (The Guardians of Childhood)
The brief prologue to an intended series about the magical beings that watch over the kids of Earth (including Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and — you guessed it — the Man in the Moon), this book is short enough to read in a few sittings, but it sets up a whopper of a saga, and it’s packed with gorgeous illustrations.

Without giving too much away, I’ll just tell you that Joyce lays out loads of ready-made mythology here, drawing on the hokey characters every kid knows by heart to construct the boundaries of a world that has the potential to be as rich and inviting as Piers Anthony’s Xanth (although I suppose a more apt comparison would be his Incarnations of Immortality series, but whatever).

Put simply, there’s a long and epic war being waged for the children of the universe, and the lines are drawn between the Guardians of Childhood and Pitch, the King of Nightmares. Of course, it’s a story that has its scary moments, but more than anything, it’s exciting — you already knew Joyce was a fabulous illustrator with a finely tuned sense of whimsy, but it turns out he also has an amazing gift for pacing a kids’ book like an action thriller, not to mention describing fast-paced battles. In other words, my four-year-old son loves it.

In fact, we’ve already moved on to Book One of the series, Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King, which reveals the origin of the young Russian bandit who eventually becomes…well, we can talk about that later. Start with The Man in the Moon, and thank me later.

That’s it for now, but I’ve already got a Kindle queue bursting with books begging to be read to my kids, so I’m sure I’ll be back for more. Happy reading!

For as long as the human race has been able to hear music, we’ve wanted more. And once upon a time, we quenched that thirst by picking up an instrument — or gathering around someone else who had one — and making music happen.

Over time, we learned to develop technology that helped us satisfy our craving — and as more of us learned to use radios, record players, tape decks, CDs, mp3 players, and smartphones, and grew accustomed to a world in which music was never more than an arm’s reach (or the click of a button) away, the further we drifted from that innate urge to create. For a lot of us, music has become something we’re meant to passively consume.

I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way, and neither do a growing number of artists dedicated to reconnecting families with the joy of making music for its own sake, including Nerissa and Katryna Nields. The veteran folk duo recently released All Together Singing in the Kitchen: Creative Ways to Make and Listen to Music as a Family, a book/CD package with something for homestyle musicians of all ages, and they were kind enough to take a few minutes out of their busy promotional schedule to talk to us.

I talk to a lot of artists who express the ideas you’ve written about here. This book seems to be part of a movement.

Nerissa: Yeah. Well, that’s a nice bit of serendipity for us. One of the things we say in the book, and it’s absolutely true, is that it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I heard the recorded versions of a lot of the folk songs I’d grown up with. My dad did have a turntable, and he did play a lot of music, but he was playing what he wanted to hear — ’70s country LPs he’d bought, and occasionally classical music. Mostly, the songs we knew, we knew because he played them on the guitar. That’s how we learned them. That’s how you make a song your own, by passing it down through the oral tradition, rather than making a recording out of it.

I have a lot of respect for recording, too — obviously, we’re recording artists. But in terms of raising kids, I think it’s so wonderful to make a song your own. And that’s kind of what we do in all realms — we’ll take a beloved folk song and change the words, and encourage the kids to make their own versions.

Katryna: Observing art can be a transformative experience, but making art is almost always a transformative experience. And I think people are starting to realize that again. I mean, a ukulele…you can pick one up and really know how to play a song in probably three months. That’s an exciting and liberating gift that it seems like people are beginning to rediscover.

I think my favorite story from the book is the one about the woman who inherited a mountain dulcimer and didn’t even think about learning how to play it until a random stranger suggested it — and then watched as music became a huge part of her child’s life.

Nerissa: Isn’t that amazing? I think it’s so inspiring.

It’s inspiring, but it also speaks to this weird disconnect we’ve developed in our relationship with music, where we can have an instrument literally in our hands and not think about playing it. Do you have any thoughts as to how we got to this point?

Katryna: Well, there was a time when the only way you could hear music is if you made it yourself. Even when we were kids, we had a turntable, but even then, it was a little bit of a cumbersome thing to put it on the turntable, get up and change it after 22 minutes or whatever it was, and in our cars, we had AM radio, and that was it. Now, it’s easy to carry a million songs around. You can see someone not wanting to learn how to play an instrument because all you need is an iPod.

Maybe, though, the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. I know that when I go to singalongs now, people often like to have iPads in the room so they can have the lyrics and chords handy. The marriage of that technology with the simplicity of the guitar is such a cool thing to see.

Nerissa: I do think that our relationship with technology tends to move in a wave pattern. It takes a few leaps forward and we all go whoa, and then we catch up and make it our own, and then it leaps forward again. I think we’re in a catching-up phase right now. I think it would be interesting to chart the ebb and flow of folk music’s popularity against the technological tide — I wonder if one has anything to do with the other.

I often think about an old quote from Pete Seeger where he talked about being ambivalent about making albums, because he was worried that he was sort of tacitly encouraging people to be passive. We take recorded music for granted now, but at the time, it was a real decision for an artist to make, and I think it’s still thought-provoking.

Nerissa: For me, the two things definitely went hand in hand, because I remember being really daunted, as a teenager learning how to play guitar, by the things the Beatles were doing. I think it all depends on the attitude you take, and hopefully, what we’re giving people with this book is a “yes you can” attitude.

I wanted to talk about that message. Reading it reminded me of a time in the ’90s when I was talking to a producer about the way newly affordable recording technology had led to an explosion in self-released albums, and his response was that everyone thinks they have a right to make music, but they’re wrong.

Katryna: Well, that’s just commerce getting in the way.

Nerissa: I wouldn’t even say it’s commerce — I’d say it’s ego. I have a writer friend with whom I had a similar conversation in the early aughts, when self-publishing was starting to take off, and they had the same basic response. But good work rises and falls on its own merits.

Katryna: And also, the idea that every reader and every listener…I mean, is Lou Reed a good singer? I don’t know. But there are people who are moved beyond words by what he does, and how tragic would it have been if he’d decided he couldn’t sing and just not done it? It’s silly to think there’s a good and a bad when it comes to art. Some of the most moving recordings I’ve ever heard have been by complete amateurs.

I think when you invite this kind of stuff — writing, drawing, singing, crafting — into your life, what you’re doing is instilling a love of creativity in your kids. And no matter what their job ends up being, they will have that as part of their vocabulary. This way of not seeing the world as a boxed-in, linear thing, but something full of possibilities.

Nerissa: Right. The benefits of having music in your life are well-documented, but they bear repeating. It really pays dividends in terms of how it shapes the brain, and the heart, and the soul, in ways that are incalculable.

Katryna: I think one of our main theses with this book is the idea that by using music, you’re forging connections with your children that will hopefully remain throughout your family’s life. Some people do it by watching baseball with their kids. For us, it’s been music — that’s been the glue. It’s created pathways for us to communicate, and to remember that we’re from the same world. That we can be helpful to each other.

If your kids love Caspar Babypants‘ music as much as mine do, you’re doubtless already familiar with the work of his wife, artist Kate Endle. Not only has she been responsible for each Caspar Babypants album cover, she’s also a busy Etsy shopkeeper and thriving illustrator of children’s books like Trout Are Made of Trees and Bella and the Bunny.

Now, Kate and Caspar are expanding their partnership, and the first fruits of their labor are here: Bunny Rabbit in the Sunlight, a beautiful, simply written bedtime story, and My Woodland Wish, the tale of a girl who wishes she could play with the animals in the woods around her house. Both books come with a URL where you can download an mp3 to go with the story.

Both books are fairly similar, in that they focus on the outdoors, feature stories built from easy-to-understand rhymes, and include plenty of lovely Endle artwork. The main difference between the two is that Rabbit in the Sunlight is a board book, and the shorter of the two — it’s the kind of thing you’ll pull out before bed for your favorite toddler — while My Woodland Wish offers more of a full-fledged narrative.

Their differences are less meaningful than their similarities, however — both books capture the peaceful, gentle spirit of Caspar Babypants’ music, and feature some of Endle’s loveliest work. I took the books out on a Sunday morning when my kids were running wild, and they calmed right down, eagerly identifying animals on the pages and absorbing the soothing rhythm of the stories.

Both books have been beautifully assembled by Sasquatch Press, particularly Bunny Rabbit in the Sunlight, which was printed with a really pleasant-looking matte finish on the boards. They’re affordably priced — you can own them both for less than $25 through Amazon — and they come with some wonderful free music. Don’t miss the chance to help support a pair of talented independent artists (and give your family a couple of great gifts in the process).

With the release of the first Trout Fishing in America book/CD combo, My Name Is Chicken Joe, in 2009, Grimwood and Idlet seem to have started a whole new franchise for themselves. Chicken Joe, the farm-dwelling cat who sleeps in a henhouse, has returned with a new adventure: Chicken Joe Forgets Something Important, which bundles an album of brand new family tunes alongside another beautifully illustrated hardcover book. It’s a really lovely package, and to welcome Chicken Joe back to our shelves, we knew we had to talk to Keith and Ezra about the project.

Happy new release day! What kind of response are you seeing so far?

Keith: So far, it’s been fun. We just put out this little video thing that came out on YouTube and stuff, and it’s doing really well.

Ezra: The local station came out and filmed piece on us earlier this week — that was pretty nice, too.

Chicken Joe Forgets Something Important features more new songs than the last book, right?

Ezra: Absolutely. From beginning to end, the songs were written with the story in mind — and we also wrote the story by narrating and taking on different characters, which was a lot of fun. It was territory we had never explored before.

Keith: We’re working on doing it as a performance piece, where we read it by becoming the characters. As we read it, we play the music in the background, and we take on those characters. We’re going to be doing it as part of the kids’ show, which should be a lot of fun.

What led to your decision to enter that new territory — to write an album around a story?

Keith: Well, we had the story, and we wondered which songs were going to go with it. So what we did was, we went back through the story and pulled out key phrases. So often, a phrase will spark a song — you hear someone say something, and it serves as inspiration.

It was the same with this story. You know, there’s a bit in there about how Chicken Joe — who is a real-life cat, he’s my cat, and he really does sleep in a henhouse — needs 16 or 17 hours of sleep a day. I’ve always thought that was funny, so it became the song “16 or 17 Hours of Sleep.” At another point in the story, someone mentions “the big game.” I mean, how many times have you heard someone use that phrase? That became a song. We just went and expanded different pieces.

Ezra: At one point, Chicken Joe looks around and can’t find anyone and says, “Where did everybody go?” Man, I’ve felt that. As an adult, I’ve felt that. You’re moving along, and all of a sudden, no one’s around — nobody emailing you, nobody calling, no one to talk to. “Where’d everybody go?”

Keith: In the story, Chicken Joe leaves the henhouse and goes walking toward the farmhouse, and to get there, he has to go through the pines. Well, between my henhouse and my house, there’s a stand of pines, and I just love it. I have this little path through there, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. So we wrote a song called “Through the Pines.”

Ezra: What’s also nice about all this is that it allowed us to explore different musical sides of ourselves. “Through the Pines” is a bluegrass piece with a little bit of gospel, which was all kinds of fun to do.

Keith: “16 or 17 Hours of Sleep” has nothing to do with gospel or bluegrass — or sleep!

Ezra: “The Big Game” is a stone-cold rocker with some amazing slide guitar.

Keith: And “Where Did Everybody Go?” is just a sort of sad and wistful song. And it all works. I don’t know how.

It sounds like doing things this way did not make the songwriting process more difficult for you.

Ezra: You know, one of the great things about doing kids and family music is that you don’t have to be tied to one specific form of music. You can say “kids and family,” and all music is accepted. You get into the adult world, which we do, and they want to know: is it roots music, is it Americana, is it blues, rock, reggae…you’ve got to specialize. Somehow, when it comes to family music, we’re allowed to do whatever it is we wanna do. Which is what happens in our live show, anyway.

Keith: We do base our songs on real-life experiences. As an example, when we moved to Arkansas, which was 19 years ago, I had never lived in the country. And the people who lived in my house before me had a couple of roosters, which they essentially abandoned when they moved out. I always thought roosters were supposed to say “cock-a-doodle doo” or something like that when they crow at the crack of dawn, but these guys — I swear — would get into the trees and go, [shouting] “ROCK AND ROLL!” and roosters yelling “rock and roll!” would be in my dreams, so of course, it had to end up in this book. Chicken Joe’s roosters had to say “rock and roll.”

That’s a great bit early in the book, and it had my kids laughing right away.

Keith: It’s so true, though!

Ezra: Take a look at any lead singer in any rock and roll band, and you can replace him pretty well with a rooster. Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger… [laughter]

I’ve spoken with a number of family performers who are ambivalent about introducing visual elements to their acts, just because we’re all hardwired to notice motion, and it’s especially irresistible to kids, who will stop and stare at just about anything on TV. Now that you’ve sort of crossed that threshold with these books, what’s your thought on the issue?

Ezra: We are the visual component. We walk on stage, I’m 6’8″ and Keith is 5’5″…you know, we’re that visual component just to begin with. We’ll use any tool at our hands to move an audience, and that includes the visual difference between the two of us, and the way we move on stage.

Keith: Yeah, and Ezra and I will sort of role play sometimes, because as a duo, it’s very easy. And because we have such different personalities. I’m the smaller one, but I’m the “adult” as far as personality goes — I’ll be the one who makes sure we’re there on time, and takes care of the responsible things. Ezra is more creative — he’s more the child in this thing. And so when we take on those roles, kids take to Ezra so quick, because he can come across as an overgrown kid. I’m more serious, honestly, and we get along really well. That dynamic is natural for us.

Ezra: At the end of a show, we’re always available for the audience, and what’s very interesting is how all the extrovert kids seem to gravitate toward me, and the studious ones go to Keith. He’s less physically imposing, and they can tell he takes things more seriously.

Keith: The Suzuki violin students come to me. Ezra gets climbed on. [Laughter]

Now that Chicken Joe is an illustrated character, have you been approached about having him star in a kids’ TV series or film?

Ezra: We haven’t. But if you’ve got any friends in that area…tell them to come on over! [Laughter]

I love the illustrations in these books. They’re just as intrinsic as the music. Which seems like it should be an obvious thing to say, but they’re just so distinctive, and so much fun to look at.

Ezra: Stéphane Jorisch is a phenomenal artist, and I do love his interpretations of the characters. Sometimes they’re not exactly what we had in mind, but he has a consistent vision, and I love his watercolors over the pen and ink. It’s just beautiful.

Keith: The idea just brings together so many wonderful things. We both love to read, and we both love music, and when you have something you enjoy, you just want to share that with your kids. Watching a child with a book, watching him come to the page, looking at a physical book, listening to music, reading along — it just brings all these elements together for me. I really like it.

Have you given any thought to another book?

Ezra: We have to see what happens. It isn’t out of the question at all. We really enjoy the process of fleshing out an idea in a larger context, and we have some other projects in mind for larger things.

You’ve been making family music for some time now…

Keith: Ezra and I have been playing together since 1976, and we did our first show for kids as early as ’77. We were asked to play at a preschool by a teacher who thought it would be important for kids to see that music comes from people, not just the radio, and we thought it was a great idea. For a long time, we did those school shows in tandem with our regular club shows, where we played for people our age. And then people our age started having children of their own, and they were looking for a place where everyone could show up at the same time, and that’s when the family shows started emerging.

Over that period, you’ve borne witness to the rise of the kindie scene, and I’d like to get your perspective on all that, as guys who were out there doing it before it became a hip destination for ‘grown-up’ artists.

Ezra: It is so exciting to see the inclusion of children and families in really strong music. Early on, it felt like we were sort of all alone doing this thing, but as we’ve gone along, I’ve met some kids’ artists who have just knocked my socks off. Fabulous writers, fabulous players — it isn’t just somebody with a synthesizer and a drum machine trying to tell kids how to act. It’s real creativity, and real bands, playing at the top of their craft. I’m really happy and proud to be part of it all.

But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, something wonderful came out of all that pain and confusion: I really learned to appreciate the joy of reading to my kids.

Lest you mistake me for a TV dad, let me explain. As the stay-at-home half of my home’s parental duo, I’m the one my kids are generally less excited to see by the end of the day; by the time my wife gets home, all they want to do is be with her, and she’s more than happy to oblige while I crawl into my writerly cave and try and lower my blood pressure. The bedtime routine, including reading, has become mostly her responsibility. Ducking out on this isn’t something I’ve done by design, but it’s definitely helped me reach a few deadlines over the years.

While she was in the hospital, my daughter obviously spent a lot of time in bed — partly because she was wiped out and afraid to move, and partly because, well, that’s what you do in a hospital. There were times when she was more or less okay with things, but she was miserable just as often, and as a dad, I desperately wanted to do something to make her happy, if only for a little while. At one point, I remembered that my iPad’s iBooks app had a copy of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stored in it for some reason, so for lack of anything better to do, I opened it and started reading.

My kids have never been huge Pooh fans, and again, I have no idea why I had that book. But it really did the trick — both in the moment, when the stories made my daughter forget her pain and sent her into hysterical giggling fits, and over the weeks that have followed, as we’ve worked our way through Pooh, its sequel The House at Pooh Corner, and its welcome (though decidedly inferior) recent follow-up, Return to the Hundred Acre Wood. Those books ain’t cheap — the Milne estate keeps a tight, cash-lined grip on all things Pooh — but they’ve been excellent investments. And while my wife still reads to the kids before bed, we’ve started adding in extra reading time, and no one’s complaining.

My mother was visiting from California when all this medical drama happened, and she was there for the start of our Pooh adventures, which might be part of why she recently gifted me with a copy of Alice Ozma’s The Reading Promise. You may have seen Promise discussed in the news lately. It’s the author’s nonfiction account of the nine-plus years her father read to her every single night, from when she was nine until she moved away for college — a period they proudly referred to as The Streak.

It sounds like an inspirational story, and it really is, but it’s more than that. Believe me, I have enough parental self-loathing already; I didn’t need to read a book about some jerkoff dad’s legendary awesomeness. But around the edges of her inspiring tale, Ozma paints a piercingly honest portrait of her overwhelmed and sometimes emotionally distant parents, their broken marriage, her awkward adolescence, and many of the trials they faced — in other words, some of the many small, lingering failings we face as members of our own families. It isn’t about unattainable greatness, it’s about people reaching for each other — clinging to each other — the only way they know how. In between all the words shared in The Reading Promise, it’s the ones left unsaid that carry the most weight. Isn’t that the way it is with most families? More than the things we say, we are the sum of our actions.

For some time now, I’ve been struggling with Dadnabbit’s direction, and my writing in general. As I wrote over at Popdose a couple of months ago, I’ve largely lost interest in writing reviews; I want what I write to mean something, and as I circle that statement’s meaning, trying to untangle it, I’ve spent most of this year focusing on interviews that, to varying degrees, focus on the creative process. That was the impetus behind our ongoing Conversations series here, which will continue, although I’d like to broaden its focus to include more family media — more family experience.

Also — and I hope you’ll indulge me here — I’d like to give Dadnabbit more of a personal focus. To dwell less on giving thumbs up or thumbs down to kids’ movies or kids’ music, and to open more of a window into my journey as a dad, as glimpsed through the framework of my kids’ experiences. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but I feel like I owe it to myself to figure it out. Consider it a sort of writing promise, if you will.

Related articles

• The Reading Promise: A Father, a Daughter, and Nine Years of Storytime (wired.com)
• The Reading Promise: An Exclusive Essay from Alice Ozma (omnivoracious.com)

A collection of 14 Vigneault songs performed by Canadian singers including Patrick Watson, Thomas Hellman, Coral Egan, and Vigneault’s daughter Jessica, Kyoto highlights Gilles’ gentle whimsy; the title track, for instance, is about a Cajun musician who lives in Kyoto with his Japanese wife, where they lead jam sessions and perform for Buddhist monks (“Let me tell you about Yoshi / Fingers dancing on the harp / Has a pond of swimming carp / Just don’t say the word ‘sushi’”). Other songs continue in the same vein, from the sprightly “When the Danse Began” to the mock-operatic “Four Eggs” and effortlessly catchy “The Great Big Kite.” The arrangements are clean and jazzy, with charmingly silly vocal contributions from the singers, and the lyrics manage to be appropriate and educational while also avoiding your typical well-worn kids’ music subjects (one notable exception is “One, Two, Three, ABCD,” which will use copious amounts of Jew’s harp and lyrics about bovine peeing and farting to squeeze gales of laughter out of your children).

Sunday in Kyoto holds up well enough on its own as a CD, but as with Secret Mountain’s last release, the Trout Fishing in America collection My Name Is Chicken Joe, what makes this release special is the accompanying storybook. Illustrated by Stéphane Jorisch, the Kyoto book really only depicts the album’s title track, sticking with thumbnail sketches for the other songs, but Jorisch’s artwork is simple, colorful, and beautiful. At under $12 at Amazon, this has all the makings of a perfectly affordable, wonderfully quirky gift for the mainstream-eschewing youngster in your life. For examples of the artwork — and samples of the French-language version of the album — click here.

Trout Fishing in America – My Name Is Chicken Joe (2009, Secret Mountain)
purchase this book/CD/DVD (Amazon)

Trout Fishing in America celebrates its 30th anniversary this year — and the fact that you most likely didn’t know that, but have never heard a lick of the roots duo’s music, explains why they won’t be commemorating the occasion with a lavish boxed set, sold-out arena tour, or all-star tribute record. They will, however, be taking a fond look back at some of the most popular songs from their multiple forays into kids’ music with My Name Is Chicken Joe, a beautifully made ersatz best-of that sets their song “Chicken Joe” alongside some eye-catching illustrations from artist Stéphane Jorisch to create a handsome, albeit plot-free, book to go along with the 11-track CD. And if that isn’t enough to make you whip out your wallet, there’s also a DVD containing a “Chicken Joe” music video of sorts.

If you’re a member of the Dirty Linen crowd, you’re no doubt already very familiar with Trout Fishing in America, but if you aren’t yet among the enlightened, My Name Is Chicken Joe functions as a perfect gateway into their children’s music. Though it cherry-picks old favorites from the catalog, Joe feels as cohesive as a really well-made new album. The songs are all as wonderful as you’d expect from a band that’s earned four Grammy nominations, all grounded solidly in deceptively simple folk arrangements and topped off with gentle, positive messages about kindness, personal identity, friendship, and family. (There are a couple of detours into mildly negative territory with “Why I Pack My Lunch” and “Boiled Okra and Spinach,” but they’re about having to choke down the food your parents pick for you, and who can’t sympathize with that?)

A lot of kids’ records claim to contain music that parents can enjoy even when their children aren’t around, but My Name Is Chicken Joe really is that kind of album. Songs like “My Best Day,” “Something Sweet,” and “Count on Me” are worth having in your collection no matter how old you are. If you’re any kind of fan of roots music — and I’m talking stripped-down bluegrass stuff as well as AAA favorites like John Hiatt — or you know kids who might be, purchase this set without fear the next time a birthday or other special occasion rolls around.

Wendell Berry – Whitefoot: A Story from the Center of the World (2009, Counterpoint)
purchase this book (Amazon)

This is a beautiful little book, and the calmest, gentlest illustrated short story about a mouse fighting for its life against a terrible flood that you are ever likely to read.

That should come as no surprise to longtime fans and followers of Berry’s prolific output, which reflects the pride and commitment to tradition of his agrarian lifestyle. In his nonfiction work, Berry has argued for the merits of a philosophy he calls “solving for pattern,” which is a fancy way of saying that you should try to solve as many problems as possible at once – and do so in such a way as to minimize the likelihood of additional problems.

It’s sort of a mouthful, but it’s a beautifully simple school of thought, and it resonates throughout Whitefoot‘s 60 pages. Berry’s placid text, which meshes wonderfully with Davis Te Selle’s beautiful pencil illustrations, follows the journey of a mouse named Whitefoot as she gathers food, builds a nest, and manages to survive a flood that carries her far beyond her home. She does this by doing as little as possible — in other words, by following her instincts. In a passage about something as simple as Whitefoot building her nest, Berry extols the virtues of simplicity and thrift:

She molded the cup of the next exactly to fit by pressing against it with her body. She made it snug. She did her work according to an ancient, honorable principle: Enough is enough. She worked and lived without extravagance and without waste. Her nest was a neat small cup the size of herself asleep.

He concludes the paragraph with the most beautiful phrase of all: “Her sleep was an act of faith and a giving of thanks.”

As you may be able to tell, Berry’s writing makes few concessions for younger audiences; to some parents, Whitefoot may seem impenetrably…adult. But I read it to my three-year-old, and she loved it — I’m sure she wasn’t able to absorb the subtext of Berry’s message, or perhaps even its broader themes, but she understood what was happening, and she absolutely loved the illustrations, squealing with delight every time we turned to another page with a picture of the adorable little mouse.

It isn’t as eye-catching as the work of Eric Carle or Karma Wilson and Jane Chapman, but it’s no less instructive, and it may very well stay with your young readers much longer — sort of along the lines of The Giving Tree, albeit lacking quite the emotional impact. Like I said: A beautiful little book.

Anyway, I tried reading this book to my one-year old son Jonathan last night, and he promptly threw it on the ground, demanding a pretzel or some ice-cream instead. So my wife let me try it again this afternoon before Jonathan’s nap. I put in the lullaby CD, which is all instrumental, and began reading the book to Jonathan. He was sort of paying attention, but not enamored like he is with books such as Goodnight Moon or Five Little Monkeys. And as I was reading to him, the words didn’t seem to make sense. “I saw a starfish on the ground/He was half buried in the sand/Just so out of place…and ahhhhhhhh/He was a long, long way from home.” Nice enough, but what was the “ahhhhhhh” for? And then the words kept repeating themselves on the pages that followed. And more ahhhhhhh’s. Huh? So it’s about a dude that meets a starfish and has a nice time with said starfish. And the illustrations by Sean Kelley are really well-done. But I didn’t get it, and you can bet Jonathan surely didn’t get it.

Then a funny thing happened. I read the press release and the notes on the back from Beres, and found out that “Starfish” is a Sister Hazel song, one that Beres wrote about the loneliness of being on the road back in the mid ’90′s, but that came more into focus for him when he had two kids of his own. The words in the book are the lyrics to the song. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Now it makes sense. So I downloaded the song, and then listened again to the instrumental versions of it–a lullaby, a string arrangement and a classical guitar take. Suddenly it all came together for me, the dumbass dad.

The moral of the story is this….if you don’t know what you’re getting into, read the damn press release. If I knew the song, or knew the sentiment, I might have approached it differently. But I still think Jonathan throws the book on the ground.