What a welcome change this collection is! Completely free of the arch, cloying ickiness that sometimes informs even the most well-intentioned kids' music offerings, these tunes may well help create a vanguard of pint-sized, sophisticated (in the best sense of the word!) world citizens. While not all of the selections were originally composed with this market in mind, the music is nonetheless delightfully child-appropriate in content, rhythmic bounciness and melodic saturation. The producers have rightly assumed that youngsters are small but sentient beings whose developing tastes and interests need to be engaged and encouraged. The styles employed evoke a nostalgic yet ultra-contemporary enfant boulevardier's world of cafés, bicyclettes with bells, bals musette and le jazz hot, so that parents will also be charmed and not find themselves left out of the experience, or worse, rolling their eyes and diving for cover. The songs not only reflect daily life as encountered by children living in France but accurately portray that nation's modern cultural melting pot -- where immigrants and visitors from Africa, the Caribbean and North America, regardless of encroaching ultra-right isolationism, have indelibly graced the national consciousness with their own traditions and dialects. --Christina Roden