Leave Your Sleep [book with CD]

Submitted by nonesuch on
Release Date
DescriptionExcerpt

Natalie Merchant has teamed up with award-winning children's book illustrator Barbara McClintock for a new picture book based on Leave Your Sleep, Merchant's album of classic children's poetry adapted to music. This beautiful hard-cover, 48-page, full-color book includes a CD with 19 songs. Merchant's musical renderings, selected from her highly praised album, share the stage with McClintock's richly imagined art to create a memorable reading, looking, and listening experience.

Description

Natalie Merchant has teamed up with award-winning children's book illustrator Barbara McClintock for a new picture book based on Leave Your Sleep, Merchant's double-album of classic children's poetry adapted to music. Frances Foster Books, an imprint of Farrar Straus Giroux and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group will publish this beautiful hard cover, 48-page, full-color book including a CD with 19 songs, available in bookstores and in the Nonesuch Store on November 13, 2012. Watch a video about the piece below and take a look inside the book at nonesuch.com/media.

"When Frances Foster contacted me with the plan to transform this collection of songs into a picture book for children I was intrigued," Merchant writes in the introduction to the book. "But when she suggested that Barbara McClintock be the illustrator, I was thrilled. Her work has delighted and charmed me for many years; it is of the greatest technical quality yet deeply soulful. I've always had a love for picture books; their illustrations, poems and stories create and preserve an enchanted place of innocence we move through as children but can return to as adults. My hope is that this collaborative book of poems, pictures and music will provide many enchanted hours to children eager for beauty and the sort of adventure that happens between the pages of a book and the words of a song."

Leave Your Sleep opens the door to a wondrous world filled with witches and fearless girls, blind men and elephants, giants and sailors and dancing bears, featuring a selection ranging from the beloved (e.e. cummings, Edward Lear, and Jack Prelutsky) to the undiscovered (the young Nathalia Crane). Merchant's musical renderings, selected from her highly praised album, share the stage with Barbara McClintock's richly imagined art to create a memorable reading, looking, and listening experience.

ProductionCredits

Music by Natalie Merchant
Illustrated by Barbara McClintock
Published by Frances Foster Books / Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR).
Picture Book. 8 1/2 x 11 inches, 48 pages, Full color throughout, with CD

Number of Discs in Set
1disc
Album Status
Artist Name
Natalie Merchant
Cover Art
UPC/Price
Label
Book with CD
Price
22.00
UPC
075597960440

News & Reviews

  • Natalie Merchant was on Radio Popolare in Milan to discuss her new album, Keep Your Courage, and more and perform the title track to her 2001 album, Motherland, live in the studio. The session comes ahead of the close of Merchant's European tour and her first shows in Italy in over 20 years, in Milan and Chiara this weekend. You can hear the conversation and performance here. Merchant will return to Italy to host a new workshop at Fondazione Prada’s Accademia dei bambini in Milan on January 28.

  • Natalie Merchant was on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week to talk with presenter Kirsty Wark and fellow guests Jeffrey Boakye and Michel Faber about her new album, Keep Your Courage, and more. You can hear their conversation here. Merchant embarks on a European headlining tour beginning in Berlin tomorrow, followed by two nights at The London Palladium on Thursday and Friday, and including her first shows in Italy since 2002. 

  • About This Album

    Natalie Merchant has teamed up with award-winning children's book illustrator Barbara McClintock for a new picture book based on Leave Your Sleep, Merchant's double-album of classic children's poetry adapted to music. Frances Foster Books, an imprint of Farrar Straus Giroux and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group will publish this beautiful hard cover, 48-page, full-color book including a CD with 19 songs, available in bookstores and in the Nonesuch Store on November 13, 2012. Watch a video about the piece below and take a look inside the book at nonesuch.com/media.

    "When Frances Foster contacted me with the plan to transform this collection of songs into a picture book for children I was intrigued," Merchant writes in the introduction to the book. "But when she suggested that Barbara McClintock be the illustrator, I was thrilled. Her work has delighted and charmed me for many years; it is of the greatest technical quality yet deeply soulful. I've always had a love for picture books; their illustrations, poems and stories create and preserve an enchanted place of innocence we move through as children but can return to as adults. My hope is that this collaborative book of poems, pictures and music will provide many enchanted hours to children eager for beauty and the sort of adventure that happens between the pages of a book and the words of a song."

    Leave Your Sleep opens the door to a wondrous world filled with witches and fearless girls, blind men and elephants, giants and sailors and dancing bears, featuring a selection ranging from the beloved (e.e. cummings, Edward Lear, and Jack Prelutsky) to the undiscovered (the young Nathalia Crane). Merchant's musical renderings, selected from her highly praised album, share the stage with Barbara McClintock's richly imagined art to create a memorable reading, looking, and listening experience.