LAURIE BERKNER
“THE QUEEN OF KIDS’ MUSIC”
AND PRESCHOOL MUSIC SPECIALIST PAM GITTLEMAN
TRANSFORM CLASSIC CHILDREN’S RHYMES ON
LAURIE BERKNER SINGS NURSERY RHYMES FOR KINDER TIMES
NEW EP OUT AUGUST 30, 2024
“The queen of kids’ music” – People magazine
“Kids'-music alchemy at its finest.” – Entertainment Weekly
“Laurie Berkner does what Fred Rogers did: respect, validate, and reassure young children.”
– Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK (July 30, 2024) – Beloved kids’ musician Laurie Berkner combines her signature playfulness,
catchy melodies, and compelling vocal artistry with lyrics by veteran preschool music specialist Pam Gittleman
on Laurie Berkner Sings Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times. This new EP offers a fresh, whimsical, and
tender take on classic nursery rhymes and is set for release on August 30, 2024.
“I loved many of the nursery rhymes I heard when I was young, but I often didn’t understand them,” says Laurie
Berkner, “and I always wished there were music that accompanied the rhyming words. Pam Gittleman, with her
wonderful idea of creating Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times®, has rewritten these rhymes to make them more
relatable for children and uses them to teach many of the same values that I try to put into my original songs.
Working with everyone at Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times® and creating music to go with Pam’s thoughtful,
updated lyrics has been a true pleasure.”
Pam Gittleman, a 2020 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow and preschool music teacher of more
than 25 years, noticed over time that her young students were increasingly unfamiliar with traditional nursery
rhymes. “It came as no surprise that young parents, teachers, and caregivers were avoiding these rhymes
because so many of them are dark, inappropriate, and outdated for today’s children,” she says.
And so, Gittleman sought to provide an alternative for younger generations by revitalizing classic rhymes with
updated lyrics that not only nurture kindness, empathy, and gratitude, but also promote a sense of caring and
compassion to support social and emotional intelligence in a developmentally appropriate way.
“While you’ll recognize many of the beloved characters from traditional nursery rhymes, these are not the same
rhymes that our parents and grandparents recited,” Gittleman explains. “Rather than ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater,’
who keeps his wife locked away in a pumpkin shell, our Peter is a pickle eater who loves to share his pickles with
his sister. In the traditional ‘Tom Tom the Piper’s Son,’ Tom steals a pig and eats it! In our version, Tom is a
plumber’s son who runs off to play with a pipe that his dad needs to fix a leak. Once Tom realizes his mistake, he
returns it and apologizes. Instead of a butcher, baker, and candlestick maker, our ‘Rub A Dub Dub’ has four
rubber ducks swimming together happily in a bathtub. When one falls out, the child in the tub puts it back in the
water ‘to swim with its friends once more!’”
Having received enthusiastic feedback from her students, their parents, and her fellow educators, Gittleman was
eager to share her work at a wider level, and she had a group of ideal creative partners in mind. In 2022, she
joined forces with acclaimed children’s musician Raffi and his colleague, Lindsay Munroe, to create the first
Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times album. Also on her “dream team” list was children’s music legend, Laurie
Berkner. “When I think of nursery rhymes, I think of stories that have a musicality to them mixed with a touch of
whimsy to engage children in a fun and sometimes silly way,” she explains. “When I think of Laurie Berkner, I
think of a performer who engages children in the same way, with a combination of great music, whimsical stories,
and a touch of silliness to create the kind of fun, joyful experience that children and adults really appreciate.
Knowing that Laurie connects with her young fans in such a meaningful way motivated me to reach out to her.
Collaborating with Laurie and her team has been a dream come true!”
Of special note on Laurie Berkner Sings Nursery Rhymes for Kinder Times are performances by master
Broadway instrumentalists Tony Kadleck (trumpet, piccolo trumpet) and David Mann (saxophone, piccolo).
Tony Kadleck, who currently plays first trumpet and flugelhorn in the Broadway production of MJ The Musical,
has been heard on Broadway in Beauty and the Beast, Funny Girl, Little Shop of Horrors, Little Women, On the
Twentieth Century, Gypsy, Shrek the Musical, Aladdin, Honeymoon in Vegas, Amazing Grace, Frozen, and more.
David Mann performed on the Tony Bennet/Lady Gaga album, Love for Sale, and has played woodwinds/reeds
in Broadway orchestras for Linda Eder at the Gershwin, Hairspray, Jesus Christ Superstar, Jekyll & Hyde,
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, and more.
