Sandra Boynton

I've been slightly obsessed with Sandra Boynton's Works for Young People since college. Luckily, many of her board books (e.g., Moo, Baa, La la la!, Are You a Cow?, Doggies, etc.) are great for even the youngest readers, so I was able to include BSM in my Boynton interests with minimal delay.

BSM has even reached the point where he can "read" Blue Hat, Green Hat all by himself, and in fact read it to his cousins when we spent Shabbos with them a few weeks ago. (Grandparents and other similarly excitable people: before you get too proud of this brilliant boy's amazing ability to recite every single word of an entire book, see sample pages below. Also, in the spirit of full disclosure, BSM does occasionally get one of the colors wrong. He's still totally brilliant, though. Don't worry.)

Sandra Boynton's music albums, however, are a little more advanced. Even leaving aside Grunt (subtitled "Pigorian Chant from Snouto Domoinko de Silo"), which requires familiarity with both Gregorian chants and Pig Latin, her ostensibly-children's albums are full of satire and big words.

(Let's face it: I can't totally leave Grunt aside. Here's more about the book straight from Sandra Boynton herself:

"It’s plainchant and polyphony written in Latin and Pig Latin. I like to think of Grunt as the culmination of a lifetime of joyfully squandering an expensive education on producing works of no apparent usefulness... It became Amazon.com’s best-selling title in its category in 1999, which is true but don’t think about it too closely.")

Still, I maintain that any little boy who enjoys "Here Comes the Sun" (even if he calls it "Sun dootin doo doo"), can listen to Philadelphia Chickens and Blue Moo instead of 100 Songs for Kids Sung Over-Emotionally and Just a Little too High: Guaranteed to Drive Parents Crazy! So BSM has been tolerantly listening to my Sandra Boynton playlist (occasionally interspersed with 100 Insanity-Inducing Songs for Children) for quite a while, now.

Until recently, his favorite song from the collection was "One Shoe Blues" sung by B.B. King. (Unfortunately BSM pronounces it "One Shoe Bleeyoos". I have no idea where he picked up that accent: I could've sworn I don't have one, and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) BSM generally objects to new songs, preferring to stay with the tried-and-true, which is a little bit sad for me. C'mon kid, just give "Pots and Pans" a try: it's awesome!

However, BSM recently stumbled across Boynton's Frog Trouble, which I'd been hiding from him due to Husbinator's prejudice against Country music. (I gather that it's up there with double-wides as Things To Avoid so as Not to be a Total Hick.) BSM was disappointed with the title track, because he felt it wasn't actually about frogs. (This is what I mean by Boynton's music being a little complex for three-year-olds.) ANYWAY, he struck gold with the next song he tried. It opens, "This next song is about trucks. It's called, 'Trucks.'" BSM didn't need to hear anything else to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he now has a brand-new favorite song, even if it was his first time hearing it. A whole song about trucks. This is his jam, ladies and gents.