The Queen of Kids’ Music, Laurie Berkner, will perform Sept. 19 in Adler Hall at the New York Society for Ethical Culture in New York City and Sept. 20 at URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center. PHOTOS BY JAYME THORNTON
It’s a banner year for the “Queen of Kids’ Music,” Laurie Berkner! Hot on the heels of releasing her 18th album, “Walking With The Penguins,” Laurie is back with a treasure trove of even more original songs that encourage imagination, movement, and singing along. Laurie’s new EP, “I Got Invited,” will be out Sept. 4.
The EP came to Laurie while she imagined the magical land of Juniper Fields, where Harry the Chipmunk was going on a treasure hunt. While these new songs help bring that world to life, they also very much stand alone as a compilation of fun, interactive, and sometimes touching songs to which the whole family can sing along.
The magical land of Juniper Fields was the setting for two “Laurie Berkner’s Song and Story Kitchen” series that Laurie created for Audible Studios. Looking ahead to 2027, Laurie plans to produce an entire album of music and stories set in Juniper Fields. With the working title, “Harry the Chipmunk’s Treasure Hunt,” this album will include songs from “I Got Invited,” along with an array of other original hits, such as “Chipmunk at the Gas Pump” and “Everyone’s Demanding Bananas.”
The EP’s rhythmic title track encourages kids to jump for joy and describes the excitement of getting a letter in the mail. Meanwhile, “Take a Picture” allows kids to imagine they are photographers, and the catchy “Running Out of Time” gives them permission to run as fast as they can.
“I Got Invited” follows the late June drop of “Walking with the Penguins.” Five years in the making, “Walking with the Penguins” abounds with many new Laurie songs never before featured on her albums. Sixteen catchy originals are showcased in the collection that encourages curiosity, movement, and singing along.
The rocking “Walking with the Penguins” overflows with irresistibly interactive penguin fun. Little “penguins” might try to stop, but they won’t be able to keep from flapping and tapping when they hear the beat of this catchy song.
“Four Seasons” takes Laurie and popular Australian children’s music group, Lah-Lah, on a cheerful trip through the sounds and seasons of the year. Laurie leads kids in listening for the special sounds of winter, spring, summer, and fall, as they tap their heads, noses, shoulders, and knees, and sing along.
Kids will go bananas for the rollicking “Everyone’s Demanding Bananas,” and no matter whether they say “banana” or “banahna,” they’ll want to hear it again and again. This lively song is already an organic fan favorite.
Compared to children’s television pioneer Fred Rogers by the Los Angeles Times, Laurie Berkner will have released an LP and two EPs this year.
Laurie bops to the beat of “Big Baby Go Boom,” which features stellar contributions from NYC “A-list” horn players Tony Kadlek (trumpet) and Dave Mann (sax), with Laurie Berkner Band members Bob Golden on drums, Leslie Mendelson on keys, and Winston Roye on bass. Lap-sit babies and their grown-ups will love grooving along!
The trifecta of 2026 album releases started in March with “Cinco Canciones En Español,” an EP of Spanish language versions of some of Laurie’s most popular songs. Whether kids and parents are native speakers or language learners, they’ll love joining Laurie and her band on “Esperando El Elevador” (“Waiting For The Elevator”), “Mi Conejito Brinca” (“My Bunny Goes Hop”), “A-B-C En Español (The Spanish Alphabet Song)", “Somos Los Dinosaurios” (“We Are The Dinosaurs”), and “Escucha Los Sonidos” (“Listen To The Sounds”).
In addition to being a quadruple platinum singer-songwriter, Laurie has authored several picture books based on her songs. She has written the music and lyrics for three children’s musicals originally produced Off-Broadway by New York City Children’s Theater and now presented regionally.
Laurie also is the founder of her own Two Tomatoes Records label. She has more than 1.7 billion total streams, an average of more than 22 million monthly streams, more than 595 million YouTube channel views, and millions of albums, songs, and DVDs sold.
Her continual touring will bring her Sept. 19 to Adler Hall at New York Society for Ethical Culture in current hometown of New York City and Sept. 20 at URSB Carteret Performing Arts Center in her childhood home state of New Jersey. At both shows, she will demonstrate what sets her apart: an instinctive understanding of children’s natural rhythms and energy that keeps kids enraptured and brings parents and caregivers happily along for the ride. Laurie chatted about the inspiration she finds in her audience, as well as her prolific productivity. Enjoy!
You are playing your second concert in as many years at URSB Carteret Performing Arts & Events Center on Sept. 20. What do you like most about that venue and why?
I love that it’s a beautiful and relatively new space that is comfortable for my fans and for me backstage! It also seems to have become a real community gathering space for local families.
Will Carteret become an annual appearance?
That’s mostly up to them! But I would absolutely love to keep playing there.
What do you enjoy most about writing, recording and performing for children and why?
I love how inspired I am by what interests kids, which is part of what makes it so fun to write and record songs for them. I also love performing music for children because they are so open and ready to sing, move, and enjoy themselves at a concert. It’s also an incredible honor to often be the first concert that a child ever attends!
Your 18th and latest album, ‘Walking with the Penguins,’ is your first new studio album in five years, which is an entire generation of music listeners. Why did it take so long to release the album?
Mostly because I was doing lots of other projects in the meantime! Among other things, I released a second Christmas album, an album of Halloween songs, a Greatest Hits album, a second season of my Audible Original series, ‘Laurie Berkner’s Song and Story Kitchen,’ re-released my first three albums on vinyl, released an EP of my songs in Spanish, and made multiple YouTube videos and hour-long specials. Whew!
You released several of the ‘Penguins’ tracks as singles and performed many of them live before the album dropped. Which songs from the album do you enjoy performing live most and why?
I really like singing ‘Everyone’s Demanding Bananas’ because I get to push the top of my range in chest register when I’m singing -- and I love asking the kids to go bananas with me. I also like the title track, ‘Walking with the Penguins,’ because I change meter throughout the song from 6/8 to 4/4, and I can see some of the older kids get very engaged as they try to do the movements with me. ‘My Bunny Goes Hop’ is also really fun because the whole audience gets to yell ‘NO!’ at me, and ‘Put It in the Bag’ has been a new favorite that I just started singing in concert. I love the minor key and calling out, ‘Put it in the bag!’ with the kids.
Laurie Berkner is pictured with “A Pig on Her Head,” one of her most beloved children’s songs.
What was the inspiration for each of those songs and how?
Ahh, so many things. ‘Everyone’s Demanding Bananas’ was inspired by the illustrator I work with. We were on a Zoom call, and she was carrying her computer through the house trying to find a quiet space to work, as her kids trailed behind her. After a minute or so, she looked right into the camera and said, ‘Everyone’s demanding bananas. I don’t know what’s going on!’ And my brain lit up. I wrote the first verse right after we got off the call and then just enjoyed all the fun wordplay and ideas that came to me about bananas. They are an undeniably fun fruit to sing about.
‘Walking with the Penguins’ came from a few different places. I received an email from a teacher telling me she has to do a penguin unit every year with her kids -- and would I PLEASE write a movement song about penguins?! When I mentioned it to Michelle Esch, who dances with me in Carteret and also tour manages for me, she pulled up a video of the Basel Zoo in Switzerland where they have someone ‘walk’ the penguins around the grounds every day. I immediately thought of the title, ‘Walking with the Penguins.’ But how to make it fun? Because for a lot of kids, acting out being an animal is fun, I started there. Then I thought about how staying still can be so hard, so I pictured a child who had trouble sitting still because they kept imagining they were turning into a penguin. I try to stay still, but my body won’t listen. And suddenly I’m in a penguin position!
‘My Bunny Goes Hop’ was inspired by Michelle Esch’s daughter. When her child was 2, she had a stuffed animal named Hop, and she used to play a game with her parents where they would say that Hop did a lot of things that bunnies don’t usually do, like bark, say oink, say moo. She LOVED that game -- and she loved being the person who knew what was right and what was wrong, so I initially just wrote the song for her. Then after I saw that she liked it, I decided to record it.
‘Put It in the Bag’ came into being when I was packing up after a show. Katie Messer, who was tour managing that day, was in the dressing room with me, and we were deciding what food to take with us and what to leave behind. I had done two shows that day, and there was a lot of food left over! Eventually, as we walked around picking up each bag of popcorn, bar of chocolate, or container of leftovers, one of us would call out, “Should I put it in the bag?” and the other would call back, ‘Put it in the bag!’ It became very raucous before we finished, and as we drove home from the show that evening, Katie encouraged me to turn the whole silly thing into a song.
What did you enjoy most about working with the Australian group Lah-Lah on ‘Four Seasons’ and why?
They are such pros and were so easy to work with! I have only met them in person a couple of times because we live across the globe from each other, but they made working on this song together a complete pleasure.
How did you connect with them?
I initially met them years ago while they were visiting the offices of Little Airplane -- the production company that developed Wonder Pets and Oobi) -- and I was there working on a video project called ‘Sing It, Laurie.’ Much more recently, they reached out to see if I wanted to collaborate with them and to also offer some help with growing our YouTube channel. I’m so happy they did! Not only did I get to have them join me on ‘Four Seasons,’ but I also sang and played guitar on a song they wrote called ‘The Firefighter Song,’ and they have a guest appearance in our most recent musical and educational YouTube long-form video, ‘A Laurie Berkner Museum Special.’
Did you work together in person or digitally?
It was all over the internet.
What inspired ‘Four Seasons’?
‘Four Seasons’ was another song that I got a lot of teacher requests for. Learning about the seasons is also part of many mandatory early childhood curricula. But I wrote it because I took a poll on my social media channels, asking fans to choose a topic for me to write about, and ‘Seasons’ won!
What did you like most about work with trumpeter Tony Kadlek and saxophonist Dave Mann on ‘Big Baby Go Boom,’ why, and how did you connect with them?
They are both so incredibly talented! I met them both through the engineer I work with, Dave Darlington. Dave Darlington is also a former bass player -- and a composer -- who has a studio in Chelsea, where I have recorded all of my albums for the last 10 years. I completely trust his ear and musicianship, so when he told me how great Dave and Tony both were, I was all in. In fact, Dave Mann has played on many of my albums, and he does all the horn arrangements for me based on my ideas.
What inspired ‘Big Baby Go Boom?’
(Laughs) That was an odd one. I was filming an updated video of my song, ‘Rocketship Run,’ when someone there read a text out loud to all of us. It ended with ‘Big baby go boom,’ and I just started singing what became the chorus of that song. I loved imagining a toddler moving around, so excited to finally be able to walk on their own and sometimes falling that short distance to the floor and laughing. Boom!
Were any of the 16 songs on ‘Walking with the Penguins’ released on previous albums? If so, were they re-recorded for the new album?
‘Walking with the Penguins,’ ‘My Bunny Goes Hop,’ ‘Onyx the Octopus,’ and ‘Let’s Make a Shape’ were added to my ‘Laurie Berkner: Greatest Hits’ album because they had already been released and were fast becoming fan favorites. I didn’t re-record them for the new album.
Why did you want to release an EP in Spanish?
I have so many fans who speak both Spanish and English at home. I wanted to have some songs that were in Spanish for them, for families who live in Spanish-speaking countries, and for families where the kids -- and even adults! -- are learning to speak Spanish.
Did you already know how to speak or sing in Spanish or did you have to learn?
I don’t know how to speak Spanish! Someone helped me translate the songs, and then I learned how to sing those specific words. The translator coached me and also came into the studio to make sure I was pronouncing everything correctly. It was a really fun challenge!
Besides touring, what projects are you working on, when will they be available and how?
I have a new EP titled ‘I Got Invited’ coming out on Sept. 4. This group of songs was so much fun to write, and they came to me while I imagined the magical land of Juniper Fields, where Harry the Chipmunk was going on a treasure hunt. While these new songs helped bring that world to life, they also very much stand alone as a compilation of fun, interactive, and sometimes touching songs that the whole family can sing along to. I can’t wait for my fans to hear it!
The magical land of Juniper Fields was the setting for two ‘Laurie Berkner’s Song and Story Kitchen’ series that I created for Audible studios. Looking ahead to 2027, I plan to produce an entire album of music and stories set in Juniper Fields.
What is the funniest reaction to your music by a kid that you remember, and what were the circumstances?
One kid sent me messages through my website that asked if I really did ‘know a chicken.’ And if I did, did it really lay a shaky egg? And what was its name?
This next question is from my 4-year-old granddaughter, Jasmine, who, as you know, is a huge fan of yours. She asks, ‘What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?’
Hi Jasmine! I love ANY kind of chocolate ice cream!
Is there anything I didn’t ask on which you would like to comment?
I love playing in my hometown of New York City! I can’t wait to come back to Adler Hall on Sept. 19 to spend the afternoon singing, dancing, and marching with all the families there, along with my friend and amazing professional dancer, Michelle Esch!
Bob Makin has produced Makin Waves since 1988. Follow Makin Waves on Facebook and Instagram contact Bob at [email protected].
