DVD Review: "A Treasure In My Garden"

A Treasure In My Garden, a series of 13 animated songs and poems by Gilles Vigneault, has been one of the most popular videos in our household for the past two months. It was sent unsolicited from a publicist and we have not written about it until now because it is just too good.

We rarely come across a DVD which exhibits such a range of animation styles yet dazzles us in so many cases. Tooncan, the Montreal animation studio behind the highly stylized 2004 Academy Award-nominated film The Triplets of Belleville, turn in 13 animated sequences in nearly as many distinctly different animated styles. Clearly, the animators at Tooncan saw the project as an opportunity to experiment, and the results are as consistent and as varied as a box of good chocolates.

But it's the music that deserves top credits for this collection's success. Vigneault's lyrics spin reels around their subjects, constantly entertaining yet revealing strong narrative and musical structures that frequently blend repetition and novelty in that perfect, ever-shifting balance that few songwriters achieve in music for adults, let alone for children. Vigneault is a celebrated Quebecois poet and songwriter and one of the popularizers of his province's chanson tradition, and he frequently writes short verses and even shorter choruses and lets them duke it out in a dozen rounds or more, thus partaking of songwriting forms that make his ditties feel like they have been sung for hundreds of years.

Despite a few songs that tip into ultra-repetitive territory (we'd strike "Apple Song" from the disc if we had the power), the song set offers a portrait of Vigneault as a songwriter with enough confidence in himself and in his young audience to experiment with form and content in their presence. In an age where everyone is angling for a blockbuster and children's media is no exception, it's a welcome departure and an inspired success.

The film's distributor, The Secret Mountain, deserves applause for making every music video on the DVD available to watch for free on atreasure.tv - full-length videos, not 30-second clips, of each and every song. To get a sense of what we love about this release - the uniqueness of Vigneault's songwriting voice and the gorgeous animation that has landed these music videos a daily slot on both Canadian and French kids television stations - head to the promotional website and watch and listen to #8, "Teddy," #10, "Scuttlebutt What A Nut," and #6,"Boxes." Three of our favorites from the album, these songs represent the Vigneault/Tooncan partnership at its sharpest - wryly straightforward, florid and goofy, or spare, poetic, and even a bit disturbing.

You can purchase A Treasure In My Garden on Amazon.com or from The Secret Mountain.