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Children's Music Review: For
the Kids |
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Published by: Netwerk America
Released: 2003
Reviewed: August 2004
Our Recommended Age: All
Ages
Our Rating: A+
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| Buy: For The Kids
at Amazon.com. In
Canada: Buy For the Kids
at Amazon.ca. |
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Top
Pick. Here is a children's recording that belongs
in every family's music library. With its covers of Sesame
Street and other children's classics, it certainly is a
recording "for the kids". However, its charming
reworks of favorite tunes, selection of wonderful artists,
and its all-round style will win the hearts of adults as
well.
For the
most, For the Kids features touching and gentle
songs, but the recording is not without a fair share of
humor and fun (La La La La Lemons is case in point) or pep
(Snow Day). Cake does the Muppets' "Mahna Mahna"
in such a way that the song won't leave your head for hours,
and Barenaked Ladies' rendition of the Bert and Ernie
"La La La La Lemons" is incredible. Sarah
McLachlan's lilting cover of "The Rainbow
Connection" is pure magic, and even the tried and true
classic "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is reworked
in an impressive way. "Snow Day" by Bleu is a song
about the need for a break in the form of a snow day, and
strikes a chord in every child and adult who remembers the
excitement of a snowy school closing day.
Our
favorite, "The Hoppity Song", by John Ondrasik of Five
for Fighting, is marvelously catchy. ("Hop-hop-hippity,
hop-hop-hippity..." stays in our heads long after the
music has stopped spinning). "Willie the King" is
one of the most moving songs I have personally heard on a
children's recording. All in all, there are 16 extraordinary
tracks that offer families a surprising variety of musical
styles, and there are several songs on the recording that
are each worth more than the price of the entire
recording.
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