Vanessa Trien and the Jumping Monkeys' brand new, fourth album for kids and families - Wonderful YOU, due to be released October 14, 2016 - has already won a Parents' Choice® Silver Award! Now sporting FOUR Parents’ Choice® Awards in her hip pocket and adored by a legion of families nationwide, independent children’s musician Vanessa Trien and her band The Jumping Monkeys showcase their special brand of acoustic folk-pop with a world flavor on Wonderful YOU, an album about YOU, the listener, along with your family, friends and broader community around you.

Musically vibrant and diverse, with guest spots by kindie music luminaries Alastair Moock, Rani Arbo, Barbara Brousal, and Mister G (Ben Gundersheimer), Wonderful YOU has an underlying theme of “community.” The album gives a musical hug to the listener – YOU – as it celebrates neighborhoods, family, and friends coming together to play, work, live, and of course, sing and dance.

Says Vanessa Trien, “Making an album as a celebration of YOU, the listener, and of our relationships with family, friends and community has been on my mind for a long while. Along with my own two awesome kids, I fall in love with every student I teach and every young audience member with whom I speak. They always have fantastic ideas to share, and it’s inspiring to see their personalities already so strong and vibrant. I wanted to make an album honoring each and every one of those kids I’ve been fortunate enough to meet.”

Vanessa Trien is a first-class composer of original melodies that are artfully crafted, while at the same time displaying a natural quality that makes them easy for kids to sing along with and recall. Reminiscent of Woody Guthrie’s children’s songs, every number on Wonderful YOU has a compact message, style and flavor that is effortlessly comprehended and remembered by children and adults alike. Sharing her vision is lead guitarist Adam Michael Rothberg, who contributed a lion’s share of the production work in addition being a sounding board for Vanessa in the writing department.

Wonderful YOU kicks off with Vanessa Trien dueting with Alastair Moock on “One Foot in Front of the Other.” Explains Vanessa, “Observing Alastair’s family support one another when they faced a major health challenge, I was filled with inspiration. With thoughts of them ‘pulling each other through’ those hard times, I wrote the chorus to ‘One Foot in Front of the Other,’ and I’m honored that Alastair agreed to sing it with me.”

“Round and Round We Go,” a reggae-style exhortation to take care of our planet, features a duet with Barbara Brousal, who was for many years a key member of Dan Zanes and Friends. With guest vocals and fiddle by Rani Arbo, “Chi Chi Bom Bom” has a real Western Swing feel and tells the tale of a child who marches to her own drum, wears her clothes backward, and does the twist with frog and toad! Rani Arbo and Mister G join Vanessa Trien on her terrific version of the 1958 Bo Diddley-style Johnny Otis tune, “Willie and the Hand Jive,” imagining a town falling for a new dance craze.

Other highlights include a cover of the Beatles’ “All Together Now,” with Barbara Brousal in a cameo role, while Vanessa Trien’s kids and their friends add their voices to the chorus; “Feeling Thankful,” a sweet country waltz sung in harmony by Vanessa Trien, Barbara Brousal, and Rani Arbo (with Rani Arbo on fiddle); and the celebratory anthem, “Fireworks,” which envisions people coming together from all over to sing on the Brooklyn Bridge, as fireworks explode gloriously overhead.