Giving Life’s Lessons a Lyrical Ring

If Jim Rule is as good a kindergarten teacher as he is a singer and songwriter, he must have one happy class. The Santa Ana-based educator-dad-performer scored big points with his first lively, feel-good family album, “Share the World.” His second, the recent release “Let It Shine,” is even better.

Rule’s ability to translate the vicissitudes and joys of parenting and childhood into inventive lyrics and music sophisticated enough even for adults’ repeat listening never flags here.

In pop, folk, country and doo-wop styles, Rule nails experiences familiar to any parent who attempts an uninterrupted telephone conversation (“The Telephone Twist”) or who is inevitably reduced to the universal “because I said so!” in arguments involving offspring.

Rule also serves up a delightful a capella fairy-tale takeoff with the Australian adventures of “The Gingerbread Girl.” In Rule’s version, the magical cookie flies Quantas and evades hungry wildlife Down Under before fatefully forgetting her manners in an encounter with a platypus.

Rule is equally adept with softer songs that contain heartfelt sentiment but are never cloying or maudlin. His “Touch the Future (Teach a Child),” dedicated to the memory of teacher-astronaut Christa MacAuliffe, and “Si, Se Puede/You Can Do It!,” dedicated to the late Cesar Chavez, are inspirational anthems. “La Sombra/My Shadow,” a child-adult duet with Enrico Lopez-Yan~ez and Rule’s young son Timothy, is a touching rendition of the Robert Louis Stevenson poem.

And, sure, the traditional “Let It Shine” is a children’s music staple, but Rule, after opening with the familiar tune, turns it into something delightfully unexpected at the end in a superb blending with a farewell lyric and Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major.

* “Let It Shine,” PNO Tuna Music. CD: $15; audiocassette: $10. Plus shipping. (800) 541-9904; (800) 443-4727. Also at Pages Books in Tarzana; soon at Borders Books.

*

Animated Style: Craig ‘n Co. (“Disney’s Rockin’ Toon Town”), one of children’s music’s top acts, has a new album with a twist. “Imaginit” is a CD, audiocassette and the soundtrack to a new computer animation home video from Miramar’s Imagination Series and director Michael Boydstun (“Beyond the Mind’s Eye”).

On the video, Craig ‘n Co.’s clever, upbeat pop songs are accompaniment for a series of computer-animated segments filled with weird and wacky images from space denizens and a flying train to a magic garden, Humpty Dumpty and a bubble gum factory.

The state-of-the-art animation is fascinating--”Magic Garden,” with its benevolent moon, dancing figurines and Craig ‘n Co.’s lovely lullaby lyrics, is beautiful. But some images, such as a glaring bowling ball and a threatening clown, may be too intense for young children.

Craig ‘n Co.’s music stands alone, too, with the audio recording serving up a variety of musical styles and imaginative lyrics vivid enough to create colorful mind pictures without any visual aids.

* “Imaginit,” Miramar. Video (35 minutes): $12.98; CD: $9.98; audiocassette: $5.98. Widely available. (800) 245-6472.