Jungle Night - Ages 0+

Two celebrated artists, Sandra Boynton and Yo-Yo Ma, come together for Jungle Night, a soothing bedtime board book. (Okay, MOSTLY soothing.)

This board book guides us through the jungle to hear the distinctive, gentle snore of each animal: “Listen to the tiger: ZEEE-ZOOO-HAAA. Listen to the cheetah: CHEE-CHEE-TAAAH.” A free downloadable recording at JungleNight.com offers a narration of the book, with each and every animal snore interpreted by the expressive, playful cello of Yo-Yo Ma. He even does the elephant’s stop-the-show snore—though admittedly that took Ma’s cello PLUS the classic horn salute of the James R. Barker steamship. (Seriously.)

All this fabulousness leads into the coolest lullaby ever: “Jungle Gymnopédie No. 1,” a polyrhythmic jungle-y arrangement by Boynton of Erik Satie’s renowned piece, with Yo-Yo Ma on cello, guitar played by Ron Block of Alison Krauss Union Station, and drums by Kevin MacLeod. “Yo-Yo and I chose this piece because it’s the most gorgeous and mesmerizing night song imaginable,” explains Boynton. “And there was surely nothing else that could get those animals back to sleep after that elephant blast.”

Sandra Boynton is a beloved American cartoonist, children’s author, songwriter, and highly sporadic short film director. Boynton has written and illustrated sixty children’s books and seven general audience books, including five New York Times bestsellers. More than 70 million of her books have been sold—“mostly to friends and family,” she says. Boynton has also written and produced six albums of unconventional children’s music; three of her albums have been certified Gold (over 500,000 copies sold), and Philadelphia Chickens, nominated for a Grammy, has gone Platinum (over one million copies sold). Boynton has also written and directed eleven short musical films and two animated shorts, including “Tyrannosaurus Funk,” sung by Samuel L. Jackson, which won the 2018 Grand Prize for Best Children’s Animation Short from the Rhode Island International Film Festival. In 2008, Boynton received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society. Boynton has four perfect children and an equally perfect granddaughter. Her Connecticut studio is in a converted barn that has perhaps the only hippopotamus weathervane in America.