This recording is filled with imagination, creativity, and great original tunes! The songs have elements of folk, blues, jug, and rock-and-roll. Members of The Imagination Workshop Band play a whole slew of instruments in this album: harmonica, accordion, guitar, fiddle, washtub bass, trombone, electric bass, ukulele, banjo, English concertina, kazoo, jug, spoons, triangle, mandolin, slide guitar, flute, tambourine, shaker, and a washboard. This album is upbeat throughout, making it great for play time and family time.

The fun never stops with The Imagination Workshop! Even the songs that begin with a slower tempo, like Over in the Meadow, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and Let's Say Goodbye, take a quick turn and speed right back up! The majority of the songs are in a steady 4/4 time, but a few mix it up with a slightly different beat, such as Skinny Pigs, in 2/4 time. The songs address issues children will be familiar with and interested in, like dancing, pizza, animals, and acting silly! It's a Kid's Life goes through 'a day in the life of a kid'. Each song stands out from the next, whether it's the blues-rock in Dance, Dance, Dance, the belly-dancing segue in All I Wanna do, or the Russian tune in Bagels.

One of the most defining features of The Imagination Workshop Band is their encouragement of listeners to use their imagination. In the song, My Imagination they ride in a hot air balloon, dive in a submarine, vroom in a racing car, and blast off in a rocket ship! In Mama Don't Allow, Suzi Shelton asks everyone to imagine filling up the room with jell-o...and then jump on it! Listeners also swim through soup and spin in spaghetti. All your little one needs to do is close their eyes and join in the fun! You Are My Sunshine begins with Suzi asking kids to grab anything that makes noise and start shaking it to the beat. The band sings in rounds every other verse, providing listeners a chance to practice hearing more than one tune and lyrics at the same time. You can also play a game where you or your child try to identify all the different fun instruments in each song; do you hear the kazoo in Bagels or the fiddle in The Little House? Can you whistle along with Sometimes You Gotta Whistle?

My three-year-old friend, Hanna, is a fan of The Imagination Workshop, and has both of their albums. She told me Suzi is her favorite band member because "She's funny and sounds nice, like my mom." On this CD, Suzi favors, Silly Song for the jokes and animal noises. Hanna re-tells the jokes from the song to everyone she meets, causing many smiles and making new friends all the time.

--Audra

Imagination Workshop Band began in 1997 as a public program for the Children's Museum of the Arts in New York's Soho. Band members include Suzi Shelton, Lou Gallo, Albert Elias, and Shlomo Pestcoe. "It's A Kid's Life" was released in 1999 on the Imagination Workshop record label. It is the second of two CDs by The Imagination Workshop Band before one of the founding members, Suzi Shelton, began her successful solo career.