twinkle twinkle little…car?
Filed Under Stuff | May 28, 2010
Music soothes the savage beast. When that savage beast is a screaming baby, you sing the first thing that comes to your mind, even if it’s a horrible commercial jingle. And if you can remember the words to a classic (and more appropriate) nursery rhyme, the tune can get lost somewhere in the recesses of your mommy brain, so you sing whatever tune you can. We have tried singing every nursery rhyme to the tune of Yellow Rose of Texas as if it were an Emily Dickinson poem.
Thankfully, we are not alone. Jennifer Griffin felt similarly stymied when faced with the challenge of lullabies and nursery rhymes. So she wrote a book for those of us who are nursery numbskulls – Humpty Who, A Crash Course in 80 Nursery Rhymes for Clueless Moms and Dads.
This handy dandy little compendium contains 80 nursery rhymes – we wish there were even more - and comes with a CD of 35 songs so you can relearn the tunes of such classics as Frere Jacques, Shoo Fly and The Wheels on the Bus. Griffin also provides a history and meaning of each of the rhymes (who knew that a “tisket” is a nonsense word?) and describes actions whenever appropriate.
We love that the book is diaper bag sized and each rhyme is sure to bring memories of your childhood rushing back. We found the background music and singing on the CD to be a bit grating at times, but that just helped encourage us to learn the songs for ourselves. Now we can sing them to our own bouncing bundle over and over and over again in the dead of the night.
Thanks to Humpty Who, soon you will be confidently singing well-loved songs to your little ones about classic characters like Old MacDonald, Georgie Porgie and Alice the Camel and loving it. Boom, boom, boom.
Humpty Who, A Crash Course in 80 Nursery Rhymes for Clueless Moms and Dads: www.workman.com
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