Summary
Grammy nominee. #1 New York Times bestseller. And, with 960,000 copies in print, a Recording Industry Association of America Platinum album. What an event! What a show! It's Philadelphia Chickens --the catchy and quirky, tuneful and toe-tapping, exuberant, unexpected, and totally endearing family-musical-in-a-book.
Here is a full-color songbook of 17 1/2 illustrated story-poems, and a full-length, fully orchestrated CD of original songs performed by such luminaries as Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, Meryl Streep, The Bacon Brothers, and Laura Linney, who pleads "Please, Can I Keep It?"--it followed me home. / What exactly it is/ I don't know. Also joining in are Eric Stoltz, Scott Bakula, and two Boyntons, including daughter Caitlin McEwan, who performs a piece that every little listener will relate to--a love song to the chocolate chip cookies that are just out of reach. With the collaboration of composer Michael Ford (known to Boynton fans from Rhinoceros Tap ), Philadelphia Chickens is that rarest of kids' musical discs--one whose inimitable lyrics and music make it as irresistible to parents as it is to their children.
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)
