Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury is now available on Amazon! The link is here.
This was quite an interesting project, since so many people were involved. It took a bit of extra effort to make sure everyone liked the pictures I put next to their songs in the book, but I think it was worth it. A book for babies must have interesting pictures! I found a lot of great public domain images from old Mother Goose books and greeting cards and advertisements and such, but of course most of them needed some work to make them fit our songs and look pretty on the pages together (and to remove irrelevant text advertising handkerchief soap or stating a copyright date of 1890). I spent a lot of time working on the pictures. I wasn't able to include musical scores, which is why I have listed the book as poetry, but I did put in a note about it if I know a song fits the tune of "Clementine" or "London Bridge" or another familiar song.
Essentially Baby Ballads: A Family Treasury is a collection of as many songs and games for babies made up by my family as we can remember. In the end we came up with 40 items, including lullabies, silly songs, and educational songs and games. Lots of them are mine, but a fair number were submitted by other relatives. I also added 10 blank pages at the end to write in songs that don't exist yet or that we use a lot but didn't make up (or for others to add their own family's songs). It's a small book, but it's very personal. The oldest song in the collection was made up for me by my grandma who died when I was little; I don't believe she ever wrote it down, but she sang it often enough that my mom and I both remembered it. Putting it into the book means that my children will also remember.
