Summary
Full of attitude, full of fun, and all lit up with star power, Dog Train is a Recording Industry Association of America Gold Album with 600,000 copies in print. Another great book-and-CD production by Sandra Boynton, it features all original songs recorded by big-name acts and great voices.
Blues Traveler performs a stomping version of the title song, a moody rock journey that Boynton wrote especially for them. And then there's Alison Krauss with "Evermore." And Steve Lawrence & Eydie Gorme--really--who do the "Boring Song." The Spin Doctors, who channel rock's rebellious side--with a taste of punk--for "Tantrum": " No No No, I don't want to, I don't want to./No no no, I don't want to, no no./Leave me alone. Leave me alone./LEAVE ME ALONE. " And the sweetly unexpected pairing of "Weird Al" Yankovic and Kate Winslet (yep, Kate Winslet) as a duet singing "I Need a Nap."
The full-color book features a portion of each song's lyrics set as a little story, illustrated with Boynton's irresistible hippos, cows, dogs, and more dogs. Full lyrics appear in the back.
Sandra Boynton was born in Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in the Mount Airy section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Boynton's parents became Quakers when she was two years old. From kindergarten through 12th grade, she and her sisters attended Germantown Friends School, where their father taught English and was Head of the Upper School. She went on to Yale, entering in 1970 for her second year of college. She spent the second semester of her junior year studying in Paris through Wesleyan University's program. At Yale, she majored in English. Boynton intended to become a theater director. For graduate studies in drama, she attended the University of California at Berkeley for one year, then transferred to the Yale School of Drama D.F.A. program, but she did not complete the program. With the birth of her first child in 1979, Boynton postponed indefinitely a career in the theater. Boynton began designing greeting cards for Recycled Paper Greetings. Her designs were at the forefront of the Alternative Cards commercial movement that began in the mid-1970s. According to RPG co-founder and president Mike Keiser, over 200 million copies of Boynton's distinctive humorous cards featuring an assortment of unnamed cartoon animal characters, spare layout, and droll messages sold between 1973 and 1995. Since the 1977 release of Hippos Go Berserk!, Boynton has published many children's books, as well as several illustrated humor books for the general market. Her books are most typically for very young children, offered in the laminated paperboard format known as board books. Five of her books have been New York Times best sellers: Chocolate: The Consuming Passion; Frog Trouble and Eleven Other Pretty Serious Songs; Yay, You!; Consider Love; and Philadelphia Chickens, which reached the number one position on the list, and was on the list for nearly a year. Two of her books are Publisher's Weekly bestsellers, Dinosaur Dance!, and Eek! Halloween!. Three of Boynton's books are on the Publishers Weekly All-Time Bestselling Children's Books list. More than 30 million copies of her books have been sold.
(Bowker Author Biography)
