Leave Your Sleep [book with CD]

Submitted by nonesuch on Tue, 10/02/2012 - 17:08
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

  • Keep Your Courage, Natalie Merchant’s tenth solo studio album and the first of new material since her 2014 self-titled record, is due April 14. An eclectic album, produced by Merchant, it features lush orchestrations throughout, two duets sung with vocalist Abena Koomson-Davis of Resistance Revival Chorus, contributions from the Celtic folk group Lúnasa and Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, and horn arrangements by jazz trombonist Steve Davis. There are nine original songs by Merchant and an interpretation of a song by Ian Lynch of the Irish band Lankum. The vinyl LP edition includes four bonus tracks from earlier albums, previously unreleased on vinyl. Merchant will tour the US in the spring and fall. Nonesuch Store pre-orders include access to an exclusive virtual pre-release listening event on April 6 via FlyMachine featuring songs from the album and a conversation between Merchant and a host.

  • In honor of National Teacher Appreciation Day this Tuesday, May 4, the children at Irving Park Elementary School in Greensboro, NC, chose to thank their teachers with a special performance of Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" you can watch here.

  • 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.