Sunny Rhythm Lifts ‘Shoes,’ and ‘Babar’ Cavorts Around Town

Audio

Rhythm in My Shoes. Jessica Harper. Rounder Records. CD: $17. Cassette: $11. (800) 768-6337. https://www.harpcomusic.com

What a lucky day for children’s music when film actress Jessica Harper (“My Favorite Year,” “Stardust Memories,” “Pennies From Heaven”) decided to apply her pure and supple alto, her prodigious talent for sophisticated rhythm and harmony--and her experience as a parent--to writing and recording children’s songs. With three award-winning albums since 1995, including 1998’s astonishingly inventive lullaby collection, “40 Winks,” Harper has come up with another true original. Her unique songs bounce and tumble with kid- and parent-canny verbal acrobatics and irresistible jazz, reggae and rock ‘n’ roll rhythms.

Kids wheedle for more candy in “Six Licorice Stix,” and Harper turns Mom’s response into a drumming samba; the calypso-flavored “Girlquake” is about a calamitous little kid’s visit (“Look out, sister, yeah, she’s a twister / If the dishes had wishes they would get outta town”). Proud parents may recognize themselves in the tongue-in-cheek “My Baby Is a Genius,” and “A Crazy Machine” is about a strangely versatile birthday gift.

Smooth as silk, Harper’s sunny and whimsical word pictures capture heart and home, where a 6-year-old drummer’s neighbors are his biggest fans, where a loving mom assuages a little boy’s wobbly-knee anxiety about moving to a new town, and where a little girl’s day from morning to night resonates with truth. The whole album is a cozy musical haven where Harper, like the girls and boys in her songs, makes “joyful noise.”

Video

Babar: King of Elephants. HBO Home Video. $20.

Jean de Brunhoff’s beloved creation, Babar, the little orphaned jungle elephant who runs away to the big city and comes home to become king, comes to life in this new animated feature. The film includes Babar’s adventures in town with the sweet and rich Old Lady who befriends him and outfits him in natty, man-about-town attire; the unexpected arrival of cousin Arthur and Babar’s future queen Celeste; a disagreement with the rhinos back in the jungle; and the building of Babar’s great elephant city. True to the original story, Babar loses his mother to a hunter, a sequence that very young children may well find upsetting; however, the tone and pace overall are as gentle as De Brunhoff’s books, enhanced by soft pop music flavored with African rhythms akin to Disney’s “Lion King.”