In keeping with the penguin theme that seems to have taken over my blog this week, I thought I would re-post the links to Sandra Boynton’s delightful book and video Your Personal Penguin. Scroll down the page until you see the picture of Davy Jones, then click on the video. In the video, Davy Jones sings the song, and it is just fabulous. I enjoy the song so much. He adds just the right touch to it by his voice inflection and phrasing. The tune is so catchy that you’ll find yourself singing it again and again throughout the day.
On another note, Sandra Boynton has the best songs that go with her books! If you haven’t heard her songs, you’re in for a treat. I just read Philadelphia Chickens. I guess they have the book in the library here since we’re so close to Philadelphia. That’s where I found it.
The book comes with a CD, which I think is the very best part of it. These songs are all so cute! The words are hilarious, and the artists that sing them do a great job. These are famous singers/actors, such as Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, and each one sings his song with the perfect style that matches the song.
Here is the description of the book from Sandra’s website.
What an event! What a show! It’s catchy and quirky. Tuneful and toe-tapping. Exuberant, unexpected, and utterly endearing. It’s what happens when you take America’s beloved illustrator and children’s author and combine her buoyant genius with some of the most talented people on the stage—presenting Philadelphia Chickens!
Created by Sandra Boynton, Philadelphia Chickens is a family musical in a book, bringing together a full-color songbook of 17 1/2 illustrated story-poems with a full-length, fully orchestrated CD of original songs performed by the likes of Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, The Bacon Brothers, and Laura Linney, who pleads “Please, Can I Keep It?”—it followed me home. / What exactly it is/ I don’t know. Also joining in are Eric Stoltz, Natasha Richardson, Scott Bakula, and two Boyntons, including daughter Caitlin McEwan, who performs a piece that every little listener will relate to—a love song to the chocolate chip cookies that are just out of reach. With the collaboration of composer Michael Ford (known to Boynton fans from Rhinoceros Tap), Philadelphia Chickens is that rarest of kids’ musical discs—one whose inimitable lyrics and music make it as sing-along, dance-along, cluck-along for parents as it is for their children.
I have seen other videos of her books on YouTube. You might want to take some time to look up Sandra Boynton on YouTube – if you’re in the mood for some fun. Here’s her YouTube channel that you can even subscribe to!
"Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,--she would see that in all God's world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other's hands the sacred and holy trust given to her." -JR Miller
