Kimbo Children's Music

Product Spotlight: 

"What's in the Sea?" CD and Album Download

Inspired by Samantha's story? You can bring these same foundational lessons into your own home or classroom. What's in the Sea? features fun, engaging songs about marine life and ocean ecology that help educate children to respect the need for clean waters and preserving sea life. Let us explore the undersea world together!

• Target Age Range: Ideal for young learners ages 3 to 9 years old.
• Educational Value: Features catchy melodies packed with scientifically accurate terms to inspire young minds.
• Bonus Material: A PDF guide with lyrics is included with every full album purchase.

Samantha Barlow-Beamer. Owner and Artist at Little Small & Co. LLC. Author of The Faeries of Carolyn Wood.

 "It was a warm spring afternoon in 1991. My fourth birthday was a sensation complete with pony rides around the yard and a cake in the shape of a dinosaur covered in M&M’s. I’m very fortunate to have grown up in southern New England along the Connecticut River and just a quick 15 minute drive to Long Island sound. For my entire life, I’ve been surrounded by Woodlands and wetlands and for as long as I can remember even through to today, my parents have been heavily involved in different organizations which work to preserve natural habitats and increase the presence of native plants and trees. It wasn’t only my parents who walked the walk and talked to the talk when it comes to protecting our planet, but my grandparents on both sides as well as my great grandparents were much the same. For me, growing up close to nature and living in harmony with the environment comes as naturally as breathing. Not only was our family unit and our lifestyles supportive of this, but so were my books, toys, and music, which is where Kimbo comes in.

At this point in my life, I was a huge fan of Tom Chapin, Priscilla Herdman, Anne Hills, and Raffi. I watched Mr. Rogers every single day, and I was totally entrenched with anyone and anything that had to do with kindness towards nature and one another. On the afternoon of my fourth birthday, I unwrapped a special little box and inside of that box was, “What’s in The Sea?” We have to take a moment to remember that this was the 90s and when it came to music, you really needed to go to a record store or take a chance on a concert to figure out your personal style. If you weren’t quite old enough to do that, it really was a matter of your parents or grandparents buying a random cassette tape they saw advertised in a magazine and hoping you would enjoy it. Now let’s take a minute to consider what getting new music was like for kids. We didn’t have spending power and the most we could do was circle what we wanted in those magazine and hope Santa or your family would get it for you. Ha! We didn’t have the Internet and many of us were not permitted to watch a ton of television so when it came to music or fashion or social matters – – all of which children do indeed discuss amongst each other – – everything happened word-of-mouth. I’ll never forget unwrapping that little box. The cover art was what really stood out to me. It was an abstract collage of sea animals with vibrant orange and green, with a scuba diver swimming down to a shipwreck. I have a photographic memory and even now as I am near my 40th birthday, I’ve never forgotten the cover art to this particular album.  “That is my favorite tape!” My friend exclaimed. “It’s about the ocean. You’ll like it.” Ah the power of a good reference. My friend who got me this cassette tape had the best beach toys, frilly princess socks, a canopy bed and a trampoline so clearly she had taste! I took her recommendation to heart.

Once the excitement of my birthday party had subsided, I grabbed my tape player, which is one of those flat cassette players with the handle, and I went up to my room with my little purple handled scissors (that I still have) and I cut open the plastic around the tape.  I’ll never forget pressing play that first time and hearing the voice of another little girl! Something so distinct about this album was that it was a mix of adult voices and child voices. The songs were catchy and scientifically accurate but my favorite song was, “What can I do about pollution.”  I had every single song memorized from front to back, and I would sing them everywhere I went, especially at the aquarium! I would hold the marine biologist and volunteers hostage and sing songs to them about the animals they were caring for.  I remember, I would press my face against the fish tanks and sing the songs to them as well.

This tape was in a solid rotation all the way through to about 1998. I remember during the summer of ‘95, I convinced my dad to buy me D batteries so I could listen to my
Boombox (I got upgraded to a purple boombox) on the go and I blasted this tape all over a little beach community in Old Lyme, CT. Luckily, everyone there had hearing aids and knew to turn them down when I went riding through town with my boombox in my bike basket. But in 1998, something horrible happened. My mother and father are both solid believers in donating items that we no longer use and at one point, I wasn’t paying attention and she donated this tape to one of the local libraries.  It then got mixed in with items up for book sale to raise money and I never saw it again.

I moved through life and life moved through me, taking me on grand adventures all around the world while also knocking me down quite a few times and forcing me to get back up.  Through it all, I never stopped caring deeply for nature while striving to understand environmental science and particularly marine biology. While I never became a scientist as I had originally hoped I would, I kept my curiosity all these years and finally in 2020, I found a way to combine my New-York-City-sharpened-business-prowess into a company that intentionally uses nature to inspire education and advocacy. However, before I get to that, I need to touch on Kimbo again.

When I first received this cassette tape as a gift I couldn’t read, and while I could vaguely remember the name of the album and one single line to my favorite song, I never knew the company that was behind the music. I remember it was nearly every year that I would think of this album and I would ask other people if they had ever heard of it. I asked everybody – – librarians, teachers, other millennial kids I would meet out at a bar, clients who had young children. Literally anybody, and no one was able to recall it. When Ask Jeeves came out, I tried to search for it there with absolutely no luck. Then Google became mainstream and again I would search and search with what little information I had and I would always come up completely empty. “90’s cassette tape about pollution.” “It isn’t funny anymore. Garbage on the shore…lyrics.” “90’s kids cassette tape about nature.” Nothing. Just…nothing. Before my mother‘s memory slipped away, I would also ask her once a year about this tape and she would always remember the cover and she would remember that song, but we could never remember the name of the album. It was very frustrating! I remember at one point I downloaded Shazam and tried to sing what little bit of the song I could remember, but even that app couldn’t figure it out! Never one to give up, I never forgot the tape and I never stopped looking. Not only was the song catchy and now one of my longest standing earworms, but the album specifically used scientifically correct terms to name different types of organisms. I remember sitting in classrooms and feeling so excited because I knew the names of what we were studying. I always appreciated that even though I had listened to this album as a child, the singers spoke to me like an educated person. I have always striven to be that!

All of this came to a peak a couple of weeks ago.  Now, I’m in a season of life where I have a toddler of my very own and I decided to leverage my audience on social media (TikTok) to see if anyone could help me figure out my long lost favorite cassette tape as a kid.  I recorded and posted a quick video of me talking about the cover art and singing one single line of the song I could remember and within 15 minutes one of my followers got back to me and gave me all the information I had been searching for for over 30 years. The woman who identified it is named Maddie and her grandmother bought the same tape for her when she was a kid. And! Her grandmother still has the cassette! She plays it for her grandkids now.  In a flurry of excitement, I found the album on Spotify and I downloaded it. Then I went to EBay to buy the tape and no one had it. That’s when  I found your website and screamed when I saw I could still purchase the CD! I literally ran through the house and woke up my husband who knew exactly what I was talking about because I would lament to him every year about this long lost cassette tape.

Surrounded by adults, community members, literature, and music that relentlessly impressed upon me the importance of understanding the intricacies of our natural world inspired me to start Little Small & Co.  Originally, I came up with a name for my company because I felt a little embarrassed about what I was doing – – making and selling fairy houses that I made from natural materials that I gathered from all over New New England.  I figured if I came up with a name for my company and it failed, no one would equate the failure to me, Samantha. My hope was that instead, the public would just remember the faceless and comically redundant name of a small business they had never heard of.  I grossly underestimated the popularity of my business, and what started as a couple fairy houses and earrings quickly morphed into an entire small corporation.  I have my artwork which I submit to museums and galleries, I then have my retail division which includes artwork, home decor, jewelry, stationary, and an entire line of children’s gifts sold across a multitude of retail locations in New England. And then, a few years ago, I launched the events division of my company where I book out every year and travel around New England educating people on native plants and flowers, discussing sea creatures and the ways in which our warming planet is affecting not only my business, but our planet a whole. I teach patrons of all ages to make art with these materials. I firmly believe that in order to care for nature and fight for it you need to love it. In order to love it you need to understand it. In order to understand it, you need to be close to it.  I also have an artisan collective where I represent other artisans from around the world that care deeply for nature in the same way I do.  It’s all connected and beautifully symbiotic. It all goes back to the important messages I learned as a child and carried with me through adulthood.

In the wise words of that little girl on your album, “It isn’t funny anymore! Garbage on the shore… toxic waste dumped in haste right outside my door.  Want to swim, can’t go in, they closed the beach once more. What can I do about pollution? Tell me! I’ll start it today.”  Without getting political or taking too much time on this digital grandstand I’m already perched on, I’d like to say without irony that harming our planet was never funny and now more than ever, we don’t have an excuse to ignore the rampant damage done by humankind. We’ve seen what happens when large companies don’t take responsibility for themselves, when it’s difficult for regular working class families to recycle, compost or plant gardens.  And we’ve also seen the massive disconnect that people feel between themselves and nature because nature education is not heavily prioritized in our society or in our school systems.  In my own small way, I hope that I’m changing that one artwork at a time. One workshop at a time. One exhibition at a time in an art gallery where people can see what’s possible with acorns and seashells from our town.  I’ve spoken to many scientists and I understand that one person won’t move the needle. I also understand that the ocean is not something that we can get back. Once you mess it up, it’s messed up forever. But something that they all unanimously agree on is that if enough of us come together to adapt and adopt little things to live in a less negatively impactful way when it comes to the health of our planet, we can make a difference.

For everyone involved in this cassette tape back in 1990, I hope that this message finds them well and that in some way, the words from a stranger who heard these messages as a small child who then grew into an adult that never forgot them, I hope they will know that now not only do I pass these teachings on to my child, but I spread this message of conservation every day online and to thousands of people every year through art and education.  Your passion project became a part of the fabric of my lifelong mission. Words fail to explain the weight of how important this little cassette tape was to me. But I hope this email will bring everyone at Kimbo and beyond undoubtable evidence that your commitment to uplifting and educating children has an absolutely palpable effect that ripples through the lives you touched so many years ago.

Thank you for all that you have done and all that you do. I’m so grateful you are still operating all these years later and I thank you for the opportunity to share my story with all of you."

Special Book Spotlight: 

The Faeries of Carolyn Wood by Samantha Barlow-Beamer

Discover this enchanting children’s book featuring beautiful photographs of New England's natural beauty. The story highlights the journey of a little fairy who collects magical items from every state in New England to save her village and reunite two powerful sorcerers who are brother and sister.
 

Exclusive Offer: Use the code KIMBO to get $10 off your order.