Sharing Cultures with Ella Jenkins

Product Description Known to many as "the First Lady of Childrens Music", the legendary Ella Jenkins is one of the preeminent children's music artist of our time. SHARING CULTURES is the 31st release featuring Ella Jenkins performing with the children from the LaSalle Language Academy of Chicago. Amazon.com Unless a seconds-long slice of piano boogie-woogie counts, there is nothing remotely cool or hip about Sharing Cultures with Ella Jenkins. But while your kids are little -- 3 to 8 if you go by the label's recommendation -- you'll never want to remove it from your CD changer anyway. earns her reputation here, waving her magic wand over near and distant lands and turning what she discovers into 28 neatly bundled bits of sound. Cultures is not all about music; it plays more like a night by the campfire, with songs and poems erupting from a story whose narrative dips and swerves, rudderless, to the corners of the earth but manages to keep its grip on its listeners anyway. The cultural odyssey (Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and Russia are among the countries visited) benefits sharply from Jenkins' slow, soothing cadence, but credit is also rightly extended to the children of the LaSalle Language Academy of Chicago, who sing sweetly but mightily on a number of tracks. A 30-page booklet in this 31st Jenkins release clinches its staying power: Song notes and drawings are steeped in whimsy, but a pig Latin lesson pulls kids in closest, acting as a sweet, subtle confirmation that it's speaking their language. --Tammy La Gorce