Revels founder John Langstaff is among America's most esteemed music educators, and an important pioneer in the field of children's music. Throughout his career, he has found vibrant, fun-loving ways to return folk songs to the daily lives of children. The Kodaly Music Institute at the New England Conservatory awarded its first-ever Artist/Teacher/Scholar Award to Langstaff for his lifetime of teaching children and their adults the abiding joys of singing together.
"Whenever I'm asked to go to schools," Langstaff told the Boston Globe in 2000, "I always tell them, 'I'm not coming here to sing for you; I'm coming to make music with you.'"
Over in the Meadow
Winner: ALA Notable Book Selection
Ages 3-7. Beautifully drawn picture book about meadow life, with words and music. Encourages young children to sing and make up new verses.
PC-5001 (Paperback) $7.00 [add to order]
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Frog Went A-Courtin'
Winner: Caldecott Medal
Ages 3-7. An entertaining and beautifully illustrated picture and song book of the well-know folksong.
PC-9005 (Paperback) $7.00 [add to order]
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Sally Go Round the Moon
Designed for use by parents, teachers or children themselves, this lovely collection by John and Nancy Langstaff, with gorgeous silhouette drawings by Jan Pienkowski, [read more]
SB-1085 (Songbook) $16.95 [add to order]
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Let's Sing! and Let's Keep Singing!
Sing-along videos ideal for children watching alone or in groups. Excellent companion tapes to Programs 1-4, with sing-along versions of every song. Great teaching tools for classrooms, story hours or any other group setting (45 minutes each). A companion book of words, music and instruction is included.
Let's Sing! John Langstaff Sings with Children Ages 3-7 - Program 5 $9.95 [add to order]
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Let's Keep Singing! John Langstaff Sings with Children Ages 7-10 - Program 6 $9.95 [add to order]
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John Langstaff Sings The Jackfish
and More Songs for Singing Children
Originally recorded in the 1950s by EMI, these 35 charming, sprightly folk songs were picked by Langstaff for the ease with which children can sing them--and the fun they have doing it. [read more]
CD-2201 (CD only) $12.95 [add to order]
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Dark Is Rising Series, The
Ages: 11 to adult. This widely acclaimed award-winning series by Susan Cooper is a superlative dramatic fantasy interweaving ancient Celtic and English traditions with the legends of the Buckinghamshire hills and valleys where she grew up. Will Stanton quests for the six magical Signs
that will aide in the final battle between the dark and the light--the eternal conflict between good and evil out of which all myth is made. Series includes The Dark Is Rising, Greenwitch, The Grey King (1976 Newbery Medal Winner), Silver on the Tree and Over Sea, Under Stone. boxed set: 5 paperback volumes.
PC-1557 (Paperback) $24.95 [add to order]
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Green Boy
Susan Cooper is back with another adventure book for children. Long Pond Cay, in the Bahamas, is a magical white-sand island, and twelve-year-old Trey and silent seven-year-old Lou love to visit its loneliness. But one day the magic becomes nightmare, and suddenly they are in another world,
strident, polluted, and overcrowded - where little Lou is hailed not as a mute Bahamian boy but as the mythic hero Lugh, born to bring terrible destruction and renewal. Carried between worlds in a zigzag adventure of mounting tension and danger, the children risk their lives not only to save the alien world, but to ward off a new, parallel threat to their beloved Long Pond Cay. The forces of myth and nature explode in an amazing climax.
PC-5000 (Papercover) $5.99 [add to order]
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Dark Is Rising, The
Book on tape
"Susan Cooper is one of the few contemporary writers who has the vivid imagination, the narrative powers, and the moral vision that permit her to create the kind of sweeping conflict between good and evil that lies at the heart of all great fantasy. Tolkien had it. So did C. S. Lewis. And Cooper writes in the same tradition." Psychology Today
On the Midwinter Day that is his eleventh birthday, Will Stanton Discovers a special gift - that he is the last of the Old Ones, immortals dedicated to keeping the world from domination by the forces of evil, the Dark. At once, he is plunged into a quest for the six magical Signs that will one day aid the Old Ones in the final battle between the Dark and the Light. And for the twelve days of Christmas, while the Dark is rising, life for Will is full of wonder, teror and delight.
6 cassettes; 8 hours, 40 minutes.
Performed by Alex Jennings
"So perfect is the match between Alex Jennings' voice and this mysterious magical tale...that it is difficult to imagine any other voice reading these words." The Horn Book Magazine
CT-2505 (six cassette set) $29.95 [add to order]
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Boggart, The - book on tape
When a Canadian family visits a Scottish castle, they unwittingly take a mischievous spirit, the boggart, back home with them.
In the misty gray highlands of Scotland stands Castle Keep, the home of the Boggart, an invisible magic spirit who lives for the satisfaction of playing practical jokes and making mischief. The Canadian Volnik family inherits the castle, and they pay a visit. But, when they leave, they unknowingly take the Boggart home with them. Strange things start to happen in Toronto. The Boggart finds endless opportunities to cause chaos, and if the Volnik children want their lives to return to normal, they must discover the solution to the problem of the Boggart.
Set of 4 casettes; 4 hours, 47 minutes
Performed by David Rintoul
CT-1007 (casette) $29.95 [add to order]
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Boggart and the Monster, The - book on tape
It has been two years since Emily and Jessup Volnik visited ancient Castle Keep in Scotland and made the acquaintace of the Boggart, a mischievous shape-shifting spirit who has lived in the castle for centuries. Now they've returned for another Scottish adventure, joining their old friend Tommy and Mr. Maconochie, the new owner of Castle Keep, on a trip to Loch Ness, where a new expedition is determined to find the fabled monster. Of course, the fun-loving Boggart comes along for the ride, and wherever the Boggart goes, things are bound to get lively. But this time, the Boggart has a serious mission. His cousin Nessie is trapped in the monster shape he assumed long ago, and it's up to the Boggart to keep Nessie from being discovered by the expeditons's high-tech equipment. Is modern science any match for the Boggart's ancient magic?
Set of 3 cassettes; 4 hours, 43 minutes
Performed by David Rintoul
CT-2507 (cassette) $29.95 [add to order]
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Magician's Boy, The
The master of fantasy, Susan Cooper, has written a new fanciful tale for young children. A young boy works for a Magician, polishing wands, feeding the rabbits, and performing a puppet show of "Saint George and the Dragon." Then, one day, the Saint George puppet is missing, so the Magician sends the Boy through the Land of Story to find it. On his quest, he meets many nursery-rhyme fairy-tale characters from stories such as "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe." Using the cryptic clue "Only a child can find the way/To bring Saint George back to the play," the Boy steps forward to save the day. Grade 2-4
HC-5600 (Hardcover) $14.95 [add to order]
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Raspberries (CD)
Once upon a time there was a sad farmer. Everything went wrong in his life. Until one day..." Storyteller Jay O'Callahan made up the story "Raspberries" when his 4-year-old son, Teddy, was desperately in need of a funny distraction. Though the original story was short, Jay says, it grew in the telling until it became one of his favorite springtime stories. Story on CD.
CD 0002 $14.95 [add to order]
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King of Shadows, The (cassette)
When Nat Field, an orphan living with his aunt, is chosen for an all-boy acting troupe traveling to London to perform Shakespeare in the reconstructed Globe Theatre, he hopes it will help him escape from his family's tragedy. Instead he finds himself switched in time with another Nat Field, who carries the Plague. In the past he performs with the Bard himself, who becomes a surrogate father and helps him deal with his sorrow, while preparing to play Oberon to Nat's Puck in a performance before the Queen. Cooper is in top form here; her confident prose, at once muscular and lyrical, vividly conveys the sights, sounds, and smells of Elizabethan London. Most powerful are her descriptions of the story and imaginative staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which should have readers scurrying for the original. Her poignant characterization of Nat, whose grief is released by Shakespeare and healed by his words, captures perfectly an adolescent in thrall of the theater, in all its grittiness and grandeur. A dramatic and sensory feast. Jim Dale, himself a Shakespearean actor, and now familiar to many as the versatile reader of the Harry Potter titles, reads King of Shadows forcefully, with the intensity demanded by a story that employs bubonic plague as a time-travel device to transport a contemporary boy to 1599. (Story on Cassette)
CT 2506 $22.00 [add to order]
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Twelve Days of Christmas, The
Caldecott honor-medalist Ilse Plume has created a splendid Italian Renaissance setting for the lyrics of "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Inspired by Florentine beastiaries, miniatures and Books of Hours, she gives us a lovingly detalied 15th-century garden, home to a young noblewoman, the recipient of a series of increasingly lavish gifts from her courtly suitor. Plume's little book is a traditional yet fresh interpretation of a Christmas favorite - a gift book that celebrates the joys of gift giving.
HC-4500 (Hardcover) $17.95 [add to order]
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What A Morning!
The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals
Selected and Edited by John Langstaff
Illustrated by Ashley Bryan
Arrangements for singing and piano by John Andrew Ross
A unique and powerful collection. The story of Christmas is told through classic spirituals, augmented with [read more]
PC-4225 (Paperback) $5.00 [add to order]
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Songs for Singing Children
Langstaff has a genius for making old chestnuts sound fresh, young and bubbly with life. These 26 classic songs [read more]
CO-8586 (CD and Teaching Supplement Combination) $15.95 [add to order]
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CD-8586 (CD only) $12.95 [add to order]
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TS-8586 (Teaching Supplement only) $3.00 [add to order]
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Climbing Jacob's Ladder
Heroes of the Bible in African-American Spirituals
Nine great figures of the Old Testament - Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, David, Ezekiel, Daniel and Jonah - chosen by John Langstaff, are celebrated here in picures and in song. WOrds, picures and music are combined in an outstanding book to be used by families and groups of all faiths and tradtions. Illustrated by Ashely Bryan. Piano arrangesments by John Andrew Ross. Includes Didn't it Rain, Rock-a My Sould, Climbing Jacob's ladder and more.
HC-4200 (Hardcover) $13.95 [add to order]
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Saint George and the Dragon
John Langstaff compiled this delightful version of the mummers' play St. George and the Dragon which he often produced and directed. Here is the script with music,instructions for performing the sword dance, stage directions and costume suggestions. "Please to let the mummers act!"
HC-1000 (Hardcover) $9.95 [add to order]
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Hot Cross Buns
The first commercial jingles! A collection of old English street cries and their simple musical notes for children and families to use and enjoy. Collected by John Langstaff. Age 8 and up.
HC-103X (Hardcover) $7.95 [add to order]
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Victory
Two Children, Two Struggles, One Battle... One child is Sam Robbins, a powder monkey aboard HMS Victory, the ship in which Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson will die a hero's death at the Battle of [read more]
HC-2106 (Hardcover) $16.95 [add to order]
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