This upbeat selection of lively roots and blues songs gets tiny tykes a-shouting and grown-up toes a-tapping. Johnson's down-home ditties are propelled by squeaky, sliding guitars, catchy mandolin, and tootin' horns.

A follow-up to the award-winning Country Blues for Kids, Johnson's latest features the splendiferous sound of a Hawaiian Slide, violin, mandolin, and kicking percussion. Parents who prefer not to spoon-feed heaping helpings of sugar (and condescension) with their kid's music will welcome this delightful marriage of smart, sophisticated blues/swing/folk musicality (that's good enough for adult ears) and appealing kid content.

Sing-along standards like "Itsy Bitsy Spider" are given a welcome country blues makeover, while some classics, like a rootin' tootin' "Coming Round the Mountain" and a mellow "This Little Light of Mine" bring to mind the folk-for-kids tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger.

Preschoolers will enjoy counting beetles along with "Ladybug's Picnic" (a '70s song from Sesame Street's The Count) and the ticklishly silly lyrics about partying vegetables on "The Barnyard Picnic" ("Little tomato, agitator, shook the shimmy with the sweet potato.")

Slightly older kids will grow to appreciate the word play on Johnson's original "Don't Feed the Sea-Monkeys Bananas," a blues story-song in which we're cautioned not to feed the sea horses hay and other amusing admonitions.

Even better is Johnson's inventive call-and-response take on the Three Little Pigs, in which hollering wolf howls is strongly encouraged. Small fries -- and large spuds -- will relish the revelry.