→ Lyrics: Christiane Duschene. Illustrations: Geneviève Côté. Music: Paul Kunigis. Main voices: Jérôme Minière, Mononc’Serge, Marie-Marine, Christophe Daudelin, Soraya Benitez, Paul Kunigis and Les Frères à Ch’val. Publisher: The Secret Mountain. 48 pages. ISBN/Barcode: 978 2 923163 43 7. Duration 49’20’’. Legal deposit: April 2009
Wapiti! is a delicious alphabet book in songs from the publisher La Montagne Secrète, a reference in Quebec since it publishes the books- discs for children by Carmen Campagne, Gilles Vigneault and Daniel Lavoie.
During 24 well-crafted songs lasting nearly fifty minutes, children cover a particularly wide spectrum of musical styles and eras, jazz, blues, seventies, Central Europe, Latin America, children's choirs on traditional tunes, but also French song, Higelin, Reggiani, Brassens or Gainsbourg. What surreptitiously familiarize their ears for beautiful listening in adolescence. The texts and illustrations have mainly, but not exclusively, animal themes. Light and never childish, they contribute to the success of the whole.
Note some peculiarities that contrast with French books. The publisher is only mentioned in an extraordinarily discreet way, only appearing on the tiny spine of the book and in a corner of the back cover. The singer-songwriter is struck by the same humility, he only appears on the cover as a composer. Finally, the disc contains an integral reproduction of the book in Acrobat Reader (PDF) format. Obviously, the publisher considers that the free circulation of the work in electronic format is a right of the reader, and that the latter will be able to make good use of it without harming the creators. An optimistic philosophy that is hardly common on the European continent...
By Jean-Christophe Le Toquin (24/11/2009)
