Dear Laura,
Thank you so much for coming to our library and putting on such a fun and colorful presentation! The children all had a great time! We had a great turn-out, with a total of 153 participants, including parents and children. Thank you again. Have a wonderful rest of the summer!
Disclaimer: I am a huge nerd. I spent over an hour in the children’s library today and my heart was full. I like school supplies. I love things that are educational and mind-opening.
That said, I was thrilled when I gave Somersault Season a listen.
This is an adorable, eclectic (I mean, I think I heard some full-on yodeling in here…) CD from Laura Freeman that was just released July 11th.
Somersault Season is a journey through the four seasons of Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter (recently my son was in a confusing situation of being asked many questions about “Autumn”, and he has grown up in living in a climate with only two seasons: rainy and dry).
Each season is introduced in a foreign language, which I find endearing and interesting.
The music is truly delightful. Some of the tracks are more like spoken word: a whimsical introduction to poetry.
Some of the tracks are folksy (In The Fall), and some make you want to march around the room (My Brother’s a Monster, Look in a Book) , and some make you want to dance and be silly (Big City Little City, Can You Shake It?) .
Listening to Somersault Season actually made me get a bit verklimpt because I started thinking about how a CD like this could really open up the doors of a child’s mind. One minute they are sitting in daycare uninspired, and the next minute, “Wow, I have never heard words and music like that before!”
I have been so blessed through review blogging that I have donated many educational products to a resource library for low income daycares, as well as to the public library, but I really want to keep Somersault Season for myself.
You definitely don’t already have children’s music like this in your collection.
Somersault Season, a review
Reviewed by Lauren Loiacono
As a mother of 5-year-old twins and an almost-two-year old, I don’t have the luxury of kicking my heels up and reviewing music on my own. So, I popped in Laura Freeman’s latest release, “Somersault Season,” over lunch with the kids. That’s when I realized I had made a big mistake… but for a good reason! The music was so catchy that my kids barely ate their lunch. Instead they were dancing and singing and “shaking” on command.
Laura Freeman’s songs are grouped by season, featuring three songs for each of the four seasons. There is a spoken introduction before each season describing various facts from around the world. These facts are quick, interesting, and add another layer to the listening experience. However, my kids weren’t interested in hearing them for a second or third time. Thankfully, Freeman kept these fact-based introductions short and it wasn’t difficult for the kids to sit through the twenty-second interludes.
For most songs, it was apparent why they resided in their assigned season. “Frankenstein” in the fall category conjures up obvious images of Halloween costumes and ghoulish (or, in this case, not-so-ghoulish) monsters. “No Two Alike,” a sweet song about the unique qualities of snowflakes, clearly belonged in the winter.
For some songs, however, the connection was not at all obvious to me… even after I searched for it. “My Brother’s a Monster”, was a favorite of ours and a song that was very easy for the kids to pick up. My daughter had memorized almost the whole song after hearing it only once or twice. While a fun, catchy song, its connection to the season of spring was lost on me.
This CD definitely contains some gems. Our favorite song is definitely “Can You Shake It?” This song had all three of my children ignoring their lunches in favor of shaking it up and down, shaking it on their heads, etc. It was great to hear a song that even my youngest child (22 months) could easily understand. From 22 months up to 5 years old, all of my children were able to successfully and very enthusiastically act out all of the shaking that Freeman describes in her song.
Even though I discovered, the hard way, that this CD is not a good mealtime choice, it is definitely a good get-up-and-go/get-you-moving selection! Laura Freeman was mostly successful in creating a CD that achieves her goal of keeping “busy active bodies moving all year long.” There were a few songs that were, as my daughter put it, “less exciting.” Nonetheless, “Somersault Season” was definitely a hit with my kids. While many children’s music artists have music that is both accessible to children and enjoyable for adults (They Might Be Giants, Laurie Berkner, Dan Zanes, e.g.), this CD was less appealing to the mom and dad crowd. I was still very happy to discover this CD since it was very well-received by the younger crowd, for whom it is intended.