Children's Books and Music: A Breathe Owl Breathe Project

With the passing of a creative giant like Steve Jobs, we all tend to take a step back and look for the beauty, wonder and creativity that we'd like to fill our own little worlds. For some of us this is a difficult task--trying to take the mundane and twist it into a fantasy or pulling from our sorrow to create a song. For others it's as easy as turning around to see our children on the floor drawing a magical beast with crayon that mostly looks like a purple blob. In either instance, we hope to find what will inspire us, make us smile and laugh or just move us forward and give our sometimes drab lives a little color.

Breathe Owl Breathe (BOB) had impeccable timing in my life on Wednesday night as I listened to their two new songs (found on two separate 7" records) dubbed The Listeners and These Train Tracks that accompany their new children's stories with the same names. Each of the two stories begins at one end of the cloth-bound and engraved book, finally ending in the center beside each other.

Having read The Listeners first, I doubted These Train Tracks could outdo or even match it's literary neighbor but I was wrong. Each story has its own appeal. While The Listeners involved inter-play with musical instruments and a band which more closely associates itself with the writers (aka BOB), These Train Tracks is a bit more enchanting and leaves you wishing they'd make t-shirts or at the very least shoulder bags donning some of the books images. They're playful and kind, heartwarming and tear-jerking. The line that sticks with me the most (from The Listeners) is "We are not perfect, we are not normal. We are... Exceptional!" I, myself, don't have a child to read these tales to, but I would most certainly read them to my friends or just to myself when I wanted to go to bed with a warm-fuzzy in my heart.

Writing children's books seems to be a pattern lately amongst the more ambitious musician (or perhaps just a way to get fingers on idle hands moving again while on hiatus). We just visited Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis at the tail of their book tour for Wildwood at the Seattle Public Library. They seemed to have been bitten by the bug for writing a children's novel long ago while still nestled in their yet-to-be-famous lives. We'll be speaking more on their literary venture soon as we haven't quite gotten through their entire macabre tale.

BOB managed to create a new classic in young (or not-so-young) children's literature that rivals that of Goodnight Moon. They set the tone of child-like wonder with the accompanying music that, in turn, makes it very difficult to come back to reality. As a matter of fact, I'm having a hard time doing that right now. I just want to stand outside and look at the stars. Unfortunately it's raining and 55 degrees so I'll sit on my cozy couch and re-read (and listen) to the books again.

We won't keep you in complete suspense. You can listen the two song-stories below as well as "read" the books via flickr sets of The Listeners as well as These Train Tracks, then judge for yourself. Don't be surprised if you want to sit and listen to them over and over.