Read Me Week is an effort sponsored by the Tennessee non-profit Book ‘Em. The group’s goal is to provide books to lower-income children and teens and promote the joy of reading. You can learn more about the group and Read Me Week here.

In support of Read Me Week, GreenBookofSongs.com® selected the following songs from a list of 200 in our category Storybook Characters. Each song refers to a book or story young people may enjoy reading! Get them ready for book time with one of these:

• Beauty And The Beast Celine Dion & Peabo Bryson; ST/Beauty And The Beast (Disney)
• Hey Nancy Drew L Price; ST/Nancy Drew-Music From The Motion Picture (Bulletproof)
• I’ve Gotta Crow Original Cast/Mary Martin; Peter Pan-The 1954 Broadway Production (RCA Victor)
• House At Pooh Corner Loggins & Messina; The Best Of Friends (Columbia)
• Love Story Taylor Swift; Fearless (Big Machine)
• Next Harry Potter Tommy Gardner; Kangaroo Waffles & Other Treasure (Blackwater)
• We’re Off To See The Wizard Original Cast; The Wizard Of Oz (TVT)  

You’ll find more songs about stories and characters in our categories Books, Books: Story Songs and Cartoon Characters.

In a different economy, maybe we’d do what the commercials suggest, and buy our sweethearts expensive gifts for Valentine’s Day. Diamonds, vacations, dozens of roses — they all sound great. But is it necessary to spend a lot, just to let that special person know how you feel?

GreenBookofSongs.com® has another idea. Play your Valentine one of the following songs, selected from 254 in our category Love: Love & Money. They all express a common theme: Valentine’s Day is about love and devotion, tenderness and togetherness.

So hug your honey, and remember: It’s not about the gift. Happy Valentine’s Day!

• Alright Ledisi
• Can’t Buy Me Love Beatles
• Cool Anthony Hamilton featuring David Banner
• Give Me You Mary J. Blige
• It’s Good To Be Us Bucky Covington
• Livin’ On A Prayer Bon Jovi
• She’s Funny That Way Frank Sinatra
• Try A Little Tenderness Otis Redding

One of our subscribers, teacher Jo-Ann Trifiro of Millstone Twp. Elementary School, just told us how she used the GreenBookofSongs.com® database to focus her Fourth Grade students’ attention for a lesson on division with remainders.

Here’s what she said:

I wanted the kids to carefully examine each division number story to understand how to use (or not to use) the remainders. I started by making “spy glasses” out of tin foil; this got them motivated to zoom in, and when I added the “Theme To ‘Mission Impossible’”, it really got them moving as detectives!

That ran into some working songs as they circled around the room: “Across the Great Divide” [by The Band] and “Biggest Part of Me” [by Ambrosia].

Next, I just continued some fun music as they completed their carousel: “ABC” and “Enjoy Yourself” [by the Jacksons]. My Fourth Graders also love “Shakable You”, by Imagination Movers.  This song directs the kids to shake certain parts of their bodies, and it’s just long enough for them to loosen up and get some movement. 

Here are two more ideas for activity songs:

• “Shout”, by the Isley Brothers.  There’s a point in the song where the volume is dropped to a whisper, which offers a good way to ease into quiet time.
• “Peanut Butter Jelly Time”, by the Buckwheat Boys, is a silly song that’s great for letting energy loose!

Ms. Trifiro also suggested the following for class dismissal:

• “Who Let The Dogs Out”, by the Baha Men
• “Saved By The Bell”, the television theme song 

Here are some other songs to help illustrate division with remainders:

• “One”, by Three Dog Night. With its well-known line, “One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do,” it’s a great match for problems with a remainder of one.
• “Sole Survivor”, by Asia, is another good choice for remainders of one.  
• “I’m Henry VIII, I Am”, by Herman’s Hermits, helps illustrate eighths specifically, and fractions generally.
• “Two Divided By Love”, by the Grass Roots, has hooks that can help demonstrate the division process.

For more songs for teaching math and science, check out the GreenBookofSongs.com® category Science & Math. For activity songs, try our categories Carefree, Dance, Fun and Party.

Are you using songs to teach science or math? Please add your comments!

On this anniversary of 9/11, we wanted to share with our educator subscribers a program designed to teach children about that tragic day. The September 11 Educational Program, located at LearnAbout9-11.org, uses a personal approach. It tells stories from the perspective of those whose lives were directly affected to give children a point of entry, a way of understanding an event many are too young to remember. The site offers discussion questions, a presentation, and other teaching tools.

GreenBookofSongs.com® has catalogued nearly 70 songs about 9/11, several of which use a similar story-telling approach to convey the sadness and shock that gripped us all. Here are three examples of songs that might be used in a classroom:

The Bravest Tom Paxton

This frequently political folk artist leaves politics aside in this song about a man who worked in the Twin Towers. He escapes down the stairs, hastened by firefighters making their way up. Saved by heroes who died, he attends their funerals to honor their sacrifice. “They must have seen it coming / When they turned to face the fire / They sent us down to safety / Then they kept on climbing higher.”

Let’s Roll Neil Young

On Flight 93, ordinary individuals took extraordinary actions, banding together to resist the terrorists who had hijacked their plane. Young speaks here as one of those passengers, who ends a cell phone call to his wife and turns toward an uninvited fight. “I know I said I love you / I know you know it’s true / I’ve got to put the phone down / And do what we got to do.”

Land Of The Living Lucy Kaplansky

This New York-based folk artist describes a different aspect of life in the city in the aftermath of the attacks. As fires continue to burn, she meets a Muslim taxi driver who has been beaten up in blind revenge. “I’m not one of them, no matter what they say / I’m just worried about my family / My wife’s in the house and she’s scared to leave.”

Find more in our category DANGER & DISASTER:  9-11-2001.

We’re excited about two new additions to the GreenBookofSongs.com® songs-by-subject search tools. In response to popular demand, we’ve now made it possible to sort search results by one or more popular genres and/or by “hit” status as well.

Users can now choose to see all songs about a particular subject, or select Pop, Rock, Country, R&B or Hip Hop songs. Subscribers may also choose to see only songs that were hits, based on widely used standards of national popularity. 

For now, these tools are in ”beta” because tagging of the database is not yet complete. This means that filtered results will reflect only a portion of what’s available by searching the full category.

Still, Green Book users will now be able to get lists of songs matching specific needs even more quickly. For example, are you looking for songs for the Fourth of July? In addition to 109 songs in our category Holidays: Fourth Of July, you can instantly find 82 Country songs about America in Countries: America, or 60 Rock songs in the category Freedom.

We are continually tagging more data to improve filter search results, and we plan to feature filtering by more of the 31 genres included in the GreenBookofSongs.com® database. Stay tuned as we add new features and new categories to make searching for songs by subject even easier!

If you think Mother’s Day songs are only for the traditional, mom-and-apple pie kind of family, think again! According to a review of Mother’s Day songs done by GreenBookofSongs.com® for Katherine Lewis’ Working Moms Blog (WorkingMoms.About.com), there’s a selection of positive, loving songs for the mom in every kind of family.

Single moms are getting their due in songs like Fantasia’s “Baby Mama” and Clint Black’s “The Strong One”, which salute young mothers taking care of their children on their own. Songs like 2Pac’s “Dear Mama” and Jay-Z’s “Anything” express gratitude for moms who brought their sons through poverty and the challenges of the inner city, while O.C. Smith’s “Son Of Hickory Holler’s Tramp” - well, the title says it all.

These days, there’s financial stress in the suburbs too. Some dads are out of work and caring for the kids, while Mom is on the job. That’s the scenario of Lonestar’s “Mr. Mom”, who learns first-hand about the hard work stay-at-home moms do every day.

For adoptive moms (and dads too), there’s “I Am Your Mother Too”, by Keb’ Mo’ with Brenda Russell. For birth mothers who choose adoption, there’s Michelle Wright’s “He Would Be Sixteen”, in which a birth mom does what’s best for her baby, but never forgets him. And here’s one in praise of the step-mom: Sufjan Stevens’ self-explanatory “Decator, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Step Mother!”

There’s even a song for families dealing with illness. Craig Morgan’s “Tough” is an ode to a mother with cancer who continues to care for her husband and kids.

So whatever style of family you have, whatever role your mother fills, there’s a way to say thanks with a song. There’s no excuse not to follow Al Jolson’s timeless advice and “Remember Mother’s Day”!

Here’s the Top 10:

• Anything Jay-Z
• Baby Mama Fantasia
• Dear Mama 2Pac
• Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Step Mother! Sufjan Stevens
• He Would Be Sixteen Michelle Wright
• I Am Your Mother Too Keb’ Mo’ with Brenda Russell
• Mr. Mom Lonestar
• Son Of Hickory Holler’s Tramp O.C. Smith
• Strong One, The Clint Black
• Tough Craig Morgan

For the first time ever, the team at GreenBookofSongs.com® has released a study of the top categories of 2008. We looked at the top 100 hits for each of five popular radio formats - AAA (Adult Album Alternative), Alternative, Country, Top 40/CHR and Urban - to identify the main subjects  in popular music for the year, and the differences among radio formats. (Click here to see the full report on GreenBookofSongs.com®.)

Here are the Top 10 Subjects of 2008 across all five formats:

1.  Love: Choose Me
2.  Love: Making Love
3.  Love: Don’t Want To Break Up
4.  Love: Painful Break-up
5.  Money
6.  Love: Falling In Love
7.  Bars & Clubs
8.  Bragging & Swaggering
9.  Love: Devotion
10. Love: On The Ropes

Popular music is often about love, so it’s no surprise that love themes come out on top overall. The Green Book categorizes dozens of love themes — everything from ”Love: Advice” to “Love: Somebody Done Somebody Wrong” to “Love: Us Against The World” — but the ageless love themes still come out on top. 

We found significant distinctions among the formats. Compare the top five themes of each one:

AAA:  Love: Love On The Ropes, Losing & Loss, Love: Falling In Love, Motivation, Life
Alternative:  Death, Pain & Healing, Power & Control, Ego, Insults
Country:  God & Religion, Family & Friends, Love: Young Love, Love: Marry Me, Social Class: Rural
Top 40/CHR:  Love: Attracted To You, Love: Falling In Love, Dance, Love: Choose Me, Bars & Clubs
Urban:  Love: Making Love, Bragging & Swaggering, Bars & Clubs, Money, Love: Love & Money

The results may seem stereotypical,  but they hold up under scrutiny. Seven Country songs showed up in our category “Small Town Life”, but there was only one AAA song in that category, and there were no mentions in the Alternative, CHR/Top 40 or Urban charts. You can debate whether radio programming is leading listener taste or vice versa. Either way, the results of our study show real differences in the subjects being heard by each format’s audience.

When the 2009 charts are in, we’ll compare the two years to look for trends in the subject matter of these five popular formats. In the meantime, we’ll look more closely at the subjects of each genre in upcoming posts.