SOUNDTRACK: KEY WILD & MR. CLARKE-“Favorite Names” (2012).
This is a simple song (as kids songs should be). But what appealed immediately was the big fuzzy guitar that introduces the song. Lyrically it’s very simple: a list of the singer’s favorite names (all of which start with the letter J). After repeating them twice, a voice asks about girls names, and we get a few J fronted girls names.
The twist comes with the next verse when it is sung “en Espanol” and a new collection of Spanish names crop up (with the rest of the words in Spanish, too). And then they switch the en Francais. It’s multilingual!
I found out about Key Wild & Mr Clarke from WXPN, but I see that this song comes from an album that sounds awesome: Greasy Kids Stuff 3, a collection of songs from KNRK in Portland. The collection sounds great and I’ll mention more songs from it this week.
[READ: July 31, 2014] Guinea Dog
I was unfamiliar with Patrick Jennings when I grabbed this book. The title sounded intriguing, especially since we own guinea pigs. Interestingly, after reading this book we read several other Patrick Jennings books, so this will be like Patrick Jennings week here at I Just Read About That. I enjoyed reading this book to the kids, and they found it rather funny as well.
Guinea Dog is about a boy named Rufus. All he wants is a dog. He would like a big, friendly, fast, funny dog. Like the one his best friend has. In fact, he would love his best friend’s dog. The problem is that his father hates dogs. He hates them big time. He has a list of reasons why he hates dogs and that list goes on for two pages (and it was fun to read aloud).
Rufus’ father is an anal retentive, stay at home annoyance (a little over the top frankly, but it works for dramatic comeuppance, right?) who needs everything to be perfectly clean and who doesn’t want to be bothered while he is working. And there is no way he will cave on the dog thing.
Rufus’ mom looks for a way to make things better, so she buys Rufus a pet. The pet is… a guinea pig. Rufus is devastated. He decides to mock the guinea pig by naming her Fido. Rufus and his dad finally agree on one thing–they want the guinea pig taken back to the store. But when they go look for Petopia, the store is gone, without a trace. They are stuck with Fido.
But very soon, Fido starts acting like a dog. She makes little barking sounds, she plays, she catches Frisbees (sort of), she runs with him, she fetches things. She does everything a dog can do. Frankly, she is amazing (I certainly looked askance at my guinea pigs after reading this).
And yet, Rufus doesn’t want anyone to see this creature. He doesn’t like having attention drawn to himself (unlike his best friend who is a major attention hound). So he doesn’t want anyone to know about Fido’s skills. But of course Fido is a playful, outgoing creature (who follows hm to school one day). And soon, more and more people are aware of Fido. (more…)
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