Price: $18.59

The predecessor of “Here Come the 123s“, this maybe isn’t quite as good but it still rocks. As you’d expect from TMBG, it’s quirky indie rock that’s clever, tuneful and FUN. Each song has some kind of letters-related theme - from simple letter tunes like “C is for Conifers” or “Go for G!” to craziness like “Who put the alphabet in alphabetical order?”. Educationally what you’d expect from this is that kids will get a sense that learning letters is “fun” rather than “work”, and maybe pick up a few letters on the way, rather than necessarily being taught anything in any kind of structured fashion. That’s ok though when the songs are this enjoyable, or at least ok by me and my kids.

There’s a DVD too that comes with the CD with home-made-y animated/puppet videos for each song - they’re not slick, but they’re funny and good, and they help tie the letter shapes to the letter names.

I’m one of those people who once thought “elemeno” was a single letter so my favourite song on this is probably “LMNO”, but there’s lots of other highlights to choose from, like the whimsical organ-based instrumental “Rolling O” or “Flying V” with its little Cuban piano muntuno. Isabelle’s favourite is “E eats everything” in which all the letters have various food quirks, except for E, who eats everything. “That’s a really good song”, she says. “Yeah, well”, says I. “It’d be nice if you ate everything.” “Don’t be silly, Dad.”

Price: $20.51

They Might Be Giants had a string of indie hits when I was in college. “Little birdhouse in your soul” was probably their best-known song, you also might remember them for doing “Istanbul (not Constantinople)” or the theme tune from Malcolm in the Middle. They suffered a little bit in the eyes of the Serious Music Fan on account of being too much fun compared to the other bands that were hip at the time but, well, who cares? I loved them anyway - just because it’s fun(ny) doesn’t mean it’s a joke.

One of my fellow dads-in-bands introduced me to They Might Be Giant’s children’s music output. The first time me and Niamh listened to this CD we were doing the washing up, and by the time we got to “There’s only 1 everything” (track 3) we were grinning and dancing around the kitchen like teenagers. The basic template, I suppose, is American alternative rock but very quirky, very melodic, and fun fun fun! There’s lots of musical highlights - the Elton-John-esque (back when he was good) “I’m the number 2″, the killer sax riff on “Seven”, the little girl’s singing on “One dozen monkeys” - and some fantastic lyrics. Check this out:

Nine bowls of soup on the wings of an airplane/Flown by an ichthyosaur

Haha! Amazing! There’s also a couple of non-number-themed tracks at the end, like “Hot dog!” and the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme - when I saw this I was moaning about Disney putting in irrelevant Disney-related bonus tracks, but then I realised They Might Be Giants actually wrote them. There’s an accompanying DVD too, with Sesame-Street-ish little videos for each of the songs and inter-song banter from two woollen puppets both called John.

Isabelle actually took a little longer to warm to this than me and Niamh did, and it took the Mickey Mouse tunes and a look at the DVD to really convince her, but after that she was a Fan and we listened to little else for weeks. I regularly hear her singing “Triops has three eyes” to herself when she’s supposed to be going to sleep, and “Days of the week” now rivals the elephant’s march from The Jungle Book soundtrack as our favourite marching song (it’s lyrics being particularly close to my heart - “On Monday I never go to work/On Tuesday I stay at home/…”). I’ve even overheard her mother singing “One dozen monkeys” in the shower.

So yeah, a bit hit with all the family - in fact it’s the best album of any kind I’ve bought so far this year. And if that’s not a high enough recommendation, I’ve just found out that this won a Grammy this year for “Best musical album for children”.