‘Champagne and Talking Eggs’ Tells Poignant Tales

Video

“Champagne and the Talking Eggs.” First Run Features. $15. (800) 488-6652. https://www.firstrunfeatures.com/. Award-winning animator Michael Sporn, whose last video was the heart-rending “Whitewash,” about a little girl who overcomes her victimization by racist youths, brings his distinctive animation and sensitivity to two more poignant tales.

The first of these two short films, “The Talking Eggs,” is an adaptation of a Creole folk tale. It’s about an underappreciated, kind little girl who befriends an elderly woman and is rewarded with magic eggs that turn into small treasures that bolster her courage to follow her secret dream. The girl’s greedy mother and brother don’t fare quite as well when they go after more eggs, however.

The multi-award winner “Champagne” is a true story about a young teenager who survived “the dark side of my whole life”--her first six years were spent with her drug-addicted mother. Movingly narrating her own story, Champagne recounts with humor and emotion how her life changed when her mother was jailed for murder. Her grandmother and the nuns in the Catholic children’s home where she now lives taught her what it meant to be “civilized,” clean and cared for. She finds hope in her mother’s efforts to change in prison and, above all, she is urgently reaching out to other children in pain, wanting them to know they’re not alone, that they can get help and support.

Audio

“If Fish Could Sing,” Bedlam Records. CD: $20; cassette: $10. (800) 443-4727 (Rounder Kids). All ages. Canadian Teresa Doyle has a lively touch in her performance of songs from the Celtic tradition, with evocative accompaniment on flute, whistles and pipes, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy and drums. Doyle paints musical portraits of rovers, maids and bonny bairns, harvest time and seafaring.

English, Celtic and French lyrics are a playful mouthful and vividly expressive: “A leg of mutton went over to France/The ladies did sing and the gentlemen dance/To me right fal diddle aye day” (“A Leg of Mutton”) and “I churned my butter with a bullikin boot/And I churned it round with a muddy old scoot” (“I Dyed My Petticoat Red”).

“Cajun for Kids!,” Papillion, Music for Little People. CD: $16; cassette: $10. (800) 346-4445. All ages. This spicy, warm musical gumbo fairly radiates good times and toe-tapping goodwill. Louisiana’s musician-storyteller Papillon--his name, meaning Butterfly, was given to him by his “granpere,” he explains--weaves his songs together with narrative about Cajun traditions and his boyhood reminiscences. Among the many irresistible songs that make it impossible to sit still are “Let’s Go! Fais Do Do!,” “Jambalaya,” “Shuga Bee” and “Zydeco Dancing”; all are complemented by exuberant instrumentals played on fiddles, spoons, drums, guitar, Zydeco and Cajun accordions, the rub-board and other instruments.