Comments (0)

By Mom Unplugged, December 1, 2007 11:00 pm

This award-winning book is based on a real incident occurring in the winter of 1984-1985 where nearly 3,000 beluga whales became trapped in a rapidly freezing narrow strait in Siberia. For seven weeks the local villagers and the crew of an ice breaker fought to save the whales, breaking up the ice so they could surface to breathe. Amazingly they succeeded in breaking a passage through the twelve foot thick ice and led the whales to the safety of the open sea by playing classical music!

This amazing tale with a happy ending is recounted here by musician Steve Schuch who narrates the tale through the eyes of the fictional Glashka, a little girl residing in the nearby Siberian village. Peter Sylvada’s amazing illustrations lend an eerie beauty that enhances this wonderful story.

Steve Schuch also created a piece of music called “Whale Trilogy” that I first heard on an NPR broadcast many years ago. This very original composition tells this same whale rescue story musically by melding violin and actual whale songs. That hauntingly beautiful music is what led me to purchase this book and the CD. I urge you all to listen to the MP3 excerpt from this piece online at Steve’s website. It will make you want to rush out and buy both the book and the album, Wellspring: Live at the Folkway, on which is recorded Whale Trilogy.

I think that Wellspring: Live at the Folkway is unfortunately now only available as a cassette, unless you buy a used CD - which I linked to below at Amazon, but try Half.com and Ebay too. It is a wonderful album of children’s music and I highly recommend searching for it on CD.

In addition to being a lovely book in and of itself, A Symphony of Whales is a good addition to a discussion about whales, or life in a Siberian village!

Awards: A New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Book of the Year, A Parents’ Choice Honor Book, and Smithsonian’s Notable Books for Children.

Comments (4)

By Mom Unplugged, September 14, 2007 10:13 pm

Tonight we had our Friday Kids Cook Night which has fallen a bit by the wayside over the summer. My post today is not about Kids Cook Night however, but about the music that accompanies it.

I found the cassette version of Wee Sing Around the World (Wee Sing) for $2.99 last year in our grocery store bargain book bin, which, incidentally, has really yielded a surprising wealth of wonderful books! Unfortunately it is a tape and I have recently decided that we will definitely need a CD version due to all the use the poor old cassette gets.

I just found out that at Amazon, the CD and accompanying 64 page book is only $9.99, and is even eligible for the 4-for-3 promotion. I love that promotion. What a great excuse to by more fun books that I didn’t even know we needed! OK. So I am not exactly “simplifying my life” with this attitude, but it is all for my children’s sake really!

This collection consists of children’s songs from around the world. I count 40 countries on the list, most with one song, but the US has three (Native American, Native Hawaiian, and basic, classic kids’ song - “Eentsy Weentsy Spider”), India has two. When the songs are in a language other than English (as most are), then it is sung once in the native language and once in an English translation so we English-speakers can understand what it is about.

One of the things I like most about this collection are the introductions. Before each song the singer introduces him or herself by saying “Hello, my name is ____ and I am from___.” They first make their introduction in their native language, and then in English. So fascinating! I love hearing all the different languages, and so do my children. They often end up sitting on the kitchen counter top next to the speaker of our little counter top stereo so as not to miss a thing.

What a rare find, children’s music that I actually LIKE to listen to as much as they do. This is a very good thing since it is my 5 and 7 year-olds‘ favorite music, and has become our Kids Cook Night background music, and background music for many other moments as well.

The songs are all brief enough to accommodate short attention spans (even when sung in two languages). Since they hail from a wide range of different countries (Jamaica, Ghana, Iran, and Ukraine for example), they illustrate a variety of different musical styles.

One of the things that I hope to instill in my children is a sense of the beauty and variety of life around the world, yet the realization of how similar we all really are. I want them to understand for example, that while people from other countries might have different languages and different types of music, we all enjoy music and singing and dancing! I think that this collection is a great first step toward that very ambitious goal.

Photo thanks to morguefile.com and photographer clarita.