This is the rockingest party record I've owned since I bought a two-disc Go-Gos compilation in the late '90s. From the first crunchy guitar notes of the tot-empowerment theme "I Can Do It By Myself!" to the reassuring samba of "Don't Wake the Baby" and the Avril Lavigne-style chorus of "Sugar High," AudraRox's mastery of kid themes is as impressive as it is fun. This all-parent band clearly kicks out the jams live. The sole sonic misstep here is the nearly eight-minute noodling jam "Pro-cras-tin-a-ting" (Get it? It takes forever to end, because they're procrastinating! Har. Not.). It's forgivable, though, because of the considerable goodwill AudraRox has built up over the rest of the album — which my nineteen-month-old affirmed by rocking out with her baby air guitar. — Sophie Brookover

Trust me on this: Fox & Branch will please the entire family with folksy, rootsy tunes and sing-along activities. By the middle of the first song, my kids were mesmerized. Better yet, they stopped fighting and began laughing at all the unfamiliar sounds. The second track, "Instrument Intro," demonstrates all the instruments you'll hear on the album, including fiddle, guitar, harmonica and washboard — but the one that brought them to their knees giggling was the jug, because that tried-and-true old bluegrass fixture sounds just like farting if you're five. (Yes, I'm proud.) Our three kids are still young enough that it's miraculous to find music we can all enjoy, but this one had all five of us dancing around the kitchen island. — Rachael Brownell

We Wanna Rock is the latest offering from Thaddeus Rex, reading evangelist and former PBS Kids regular. His Violent Femmes-influenced acoustic rock is both sweet and silly, ranging from a cover of John Denver's "Country Roads" and "I Don't Want to Go," a song about his family moving when he was young, to kid-pleasers like "You Can Tell a Boy by the Smell" and "I Stepped in Dog Doo." Every song seems like it could break into "Blister in the Sun" at the next bridge. A few of them, like "Dinosaurumpus," are based on popular children's books, and "Slimy Green and Kind of Funny" is adapted from a poem sent to T. Rex by a fifth-grader (kids can now enter a contest on his website to write a song on his next album). My son perhaps isn't the best judge of funkiness — he gets down the same way to Sly and the Family Stone as he does to the Caillou theme song — but the more upbeat numbers from We Wanna Rock made him shake it more than usual. — Matt Wood

I love lullabies sung in languages I don't understand. English lyrics make me inappropriately maudlin, fixated on the fleetingness of childhood and how someday we'll all be dead. No such worries with any of the ten tracks on Asian Dreamland, a gentle compilation of bedtime tunes from our neighboring hemisphere. Here, my complete ignorance of Japanese, Chinese and Tatar seems like a blessing, allowing me to identify not with the singer or parent, but the sweet little cherished baby. Oh, hell yeah — I can close my eyes and picture myself tucked into a reed basket floating down some lovely, unpolluted river! How's that for a mini-vacation? Before drifting off, I asked six-year-old Milo what he thought of this pretty music.

"It's sad," he scowled.

Nice to know the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree. "Yes, but does it make you want to go to sleep?" I asked hopefully.

"Maybe if I was sleepy already." — Ayun Halliday

The Deedle Deedle Dees appeared on the scene 30 years too late to save me from a C- in American history, but it's some consolation that their obsessive interest in that subject has got my kids' wheels turning — especially nine-year-old Inky, who's fast developing a crush on Teddy Roosevelt. ("He was a narrow-chested, asthmatic child / but then he charged up San Juan Hill ...") Aaron Burr, Harriet Tubman and General George Meade's horse, Baldy, all get their banjo pickin', foot-stompin' due, as the lead Deedle, Ulysses S. Dee (Lloyd Miller), gleefully shoehorns a chapter's worth of biographical tidbits into every track. Toddler fans' needs will be met with a couple of tunes about doggies and dinosaurs, but anyone older than five can tell from the rousing shout chorus of Nellie Bly that, according to The Deedle Deedle Dees, history's where it's really at. Given that guitarist Innocent Dee moonlights as an English teacher, perhaps the next album can clean up Mama's dangling participles. — Ayun Halliday

On their debut album, The Quiet Two present a host of eclectic, danceable tunes perfect for kids who've graduated from the Wiggles but aren't quite ready for the Kinks. My eight-year-old compatriot found "Invisible Trousers," a twist on "The Emperor's New Clothes," hilarious and begged to put it on his iPod. He was also a fan of the so-serious-it's-funny ballad "I Remember Purple." I loved the organ-soaked rave-up "You Can't Hide Your Bike" and "Magic Banana," which catalogues the many amazing features of a particular piece of fruit. Sounding like the Edward Lear-influenced love child of They Might Be Giants and Sandra Boynton, bandmates Andy Ure and Chris Anderson throw out hilarious couplets like "My magic banana speaks fluent Portuguese / My magic banana can cure any known disease!" — Sophie Brookover

Striking the right tone in kids' music is tricky: tunes and lyrics alike must be childlike but not childish, full of wonder but not stupid, funny but never dumb. The soaring title track of My Green Kite nails this balance, as does the inspired song "Have You Ever Really Looked at an Egg?" and the amusing spoken-word interlude "Baseball Tips With Professor Buckley." But much of this is an album sounds like it was made less for kids than for affectionate, nostalgic adults. The clearest example of this problem is the mawkish "My Father's An Accountant," which sounds like a distant cousin of "The Living Years" by Mike and The Mechanics. I realize that the line between the music kids like and the music adults like is a blurry one — I still love Sharon, Lois, and Bram, and my 17-month-old daughter loves to get down to Madonna and T. Rex — but my 3 listeners (an eight-year-old, a five-year-old and a three-year-old) all agreed that Peter Himmelman's album did not speak to them. — Sophie Brookover

Astrograss generated a deserved buzz amongst Brooklyn parents a few years back, with kid-centric daytime bluegrass gigs in venues where alcohol was available for purchase. You can sense the jacked-up enjoyment of the unbridled child chorus freaking their way through the call and response of "Hurk," one of six Shel Silverstein poems set to original music by the quartet's winsome lead vocalist/guitarist, Jordan Shapiro. Although the poems are gorgeously arranged with traditional instruments, they seem to lose much of their humor in translation, coming off as just so much more garden-variety pandering to the silly-loving hokey-pokey demographic. Unlike the child chorus, my six-year-old associate stayed on the couch for this one, strangely unmoved by a lyric in which a compulsive eater devours his parents. One suspects that Astrograss is a dish best enjoyed live. — Ayun Halliday

Jon Langford is a Mekon, a solo artist, a contributor to This American Life — and now, apparently, Cyril the Karaoke Squirrel, front man for Wee Hairy Beasties, an animal-fixated Western swing outfit thumping their tubs for the young of the species. Vintage-voiced songbird Kellie Hogan and Langford's fellow Mekon Sally Timms (performing here as Monkey Double Dippey) lend further pedigree to the group's irresistible debut, Animal Crackers. Parents weary of the usual barnyard suspects will appreciate the emphasis on cuttlefish, flies, newts and other under-sung inhabitants of the wild kingdom. There's some concern that kiddies might grow up thinking Muddy Waters' "Mannish Boy" is a rip-off of the Beasties' "I'm an A.N.T.," but this risk is more than balanced by the pleasant knowledge that they'll recognize Langford's unmistakable Welsh growl. A certain 6-year-old of my acquaintance found that the title track gave him "crazy running-around sugar energy, like from a triple-decker ice cream cone." I could use some of that myself. — Ayun Halliday

Ben Rudnick and his friends need an editor. After repeated listenings, that's the only diagnosis that explains why this promising album doesn't hold together. The musicianship is unimpeachable, from the rollicking New Orleans stomp of "Mama Don't 'Low" and "When the Saints Go Marching In" to the lively country swing of "Route 66" and the Amelie-tinged oompah of "Merry Go Round." On the traditional songs, the group is nearly irresistible, swinging and soaring like the veterans they clearly are. The problem is the clunky lyrics of Rudnick's original compositions. Every verse — prime offenders include "Cowgirl Song" and "Chet's Fabulous Diner" — is overstuffed, and his modest vocal gifts can't quite overcome the tongue twisters he's written for himself. The result is that half the words on these songs are unintelligible, which is just not kid-friendly. There's one truly pointless inclusion, too, in the form of an inexcusably flat and slavish retread of Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole's masterful knitting together of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World." Grace's Bell has a truly infectious and charming sense of fun, but it's not quite enough to carry the weaker original material to the heights of the traditional songs. — Sophie Brookover

Oh Brother! Where Art Thou? was the soundtrack of his infancy, and yet my six-year-old son refuses to share my enthusiasm for Bullfrog Jumped. This vintage collection probably struck folks as old-timey back in 1947, when musicologist Byron Arnold spent his summer vacation persuading the mothers, grandmothers and babysitters of Alabama to sing into his microphone the way they sang to the children in their care. His subjects came from varied backgrounds, but other than Vera Hall, whose posthumous distinction is having been sampled by Moby, their existences remained virtually unsung outside the family realm.

Perhaps one day, my little twerp will have the context to appreciate such an extraordinary act of cultural preservation. You just don't hear voices like that anymore, nor such an abundance of death references delivered with the sort of high spirits that used to be called gay. The recent remastering includes a fat booklet of lyrics, photos and biographical tidbits, plus directions for those wishing to revive the wholesome musical games that were once a staple of children's play. Just because my boy's too sophisticated to skip around with a potato on a spoon, singing about hogs in the tater patch, doesn't mean I have to be, too. – Ayun Halliday

While it's the nature of folk musicians to cover the same songs over and over, Elizabeth Mitchell (of the band Ida) should be applauded for bringing overlooked songs to the repertoire. In fact, You Are My Little Bird may have the most interesting selection of songs on any children's folk album, ever. There's nothing played-out here (with the possible exception of "Peace Like a River"), and there are some daring choices — The Velvet Underground's "What Goes On," for example, and Neil Young's "Little Wing," which is probably the best song here. Mitchell's pretty, subdued voice seems made for lullabies, and her cozy arrangements — guitar and banjo enriched with harmonium, flute and Hammond organ — are deceptively complex. Mitchell is joined on several songs by her Ida bandmate and husband Daniel Littleton and their daughter Storey, and in these moments the album becomes something more simple but still charming: the sounds of a family singing together.— Gabriel Mckee

A while back, drunk and feeling maudlin, I wandered into another room at a party, and began to download Raffi songs. Raffi, the Hawaiian-shirted, preternaturally gentle singer of songs for children, was a towering figure in my early history, and as the first, bouncy strains of "Baby Beluga" and "All I Really Need" began to trickle from the tiny speakers of my iBook, I began to weep. All I really need/ Is a song in my heart/ Food in my belly/ Love in my family . . .
Raffi, at fifty-eight, is still going strong, recording, writing, and devoting himself to a principle he has termed Child Honouring, a movement that, according to his website, seeks to create a humane and sustainable world by addressing the needs of the very young. And while his latest album may have songs with a more specifically delineated message than in years past ("Salaam, Shalom, Side by Side" and "Song for the Dalai Lama"), that message has remained unchanged ever since his 1976 album Singable Songs for the Very Young. Raffi wishes nothing but love, peace, and happiness for your family and for all the families in the world.
While I have many favorites from the Raffi catalogue (with a special focus on the years 1982-1986, when I was very young), from the silly world play of "Apples and Bananas" ("I like to eet, eet, eet, eeples and beneenees") to the unabashed multiculturalism of the Caribbean flavored "Tingalayo" and the French "Y a un rat/Sur le pont d'Avignon" best of all is the heartbreakingly simple "Like Me and You" from the 1985 album One Light, One Sun. Raffi sings the names of children from all over the world ("Ahmed lives in Egypt/Moshe lives in Israel/Bruce lives in Australia") before concluding, softly, "each one is just like the other . . . a very special son or daughter, a lot like you and me." For any parent questioning the wisdom of bringing a child into the world at a time when the divisions between people seem so great, there's your answer, in language so simple only a child can understand it. — Rachel Shukert click to close