Recently published articles put us in mind of two great books with links to music to check out with your kids.

Slate discusses Rise Up Singing, the Pete Seeger-created compendium of the lyrics and music for over 1,200 traditional songs. We love this book, and turn to it to rediscover old songs or find new ones to sing with and to Z. Highly recommended, and on sale for around $16 on Amazon.com.

Adrienne at Baby Toolkit reveled in her young son's enjoyment of The Nutcracker in a recent post worth reading in its own right. But the book she mentions, the original story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, is currently on my bedside table and gets a few pages read each night. I'm previewing it for Z (the story is significantly different from that of the ballet), and it's good stuff so far, with great illustrations by Maurice Sendak. For the record, it's temporarily out of stock on Amazon.com but "value priced" at $13, which is ridiculously low - this is a fat, hardcover book with a ton of illustrations. If you can bear to buy for next year's holiday-ish reading (or don't mind reading out of season) this is a great find, even if you're preordering for when it gets in. - Jeremiah