Sandra Boynton - General

General

Boynton's greeting card designs for Recycled Paper Greetings were at the forefront of the Alternative Cards commercial movement that began in the mid-1970s. According to RPG co-founder and president Mike Keiser, over 200 million copies of Boynton's distinctive humorous cards—featuring an assortment of unnamed cartoon animal characters, spare layout, and droll messages—sold between 1973 and 1995. The best known of these is a 1975 birthday card bearing images of four animals and the message "Hippo Birdie Two Ewes", a pun playing on the phrase "Happy Birthday to You". The card has sold over ten million copies to date.

Since the 1977 release of Hippos Go Berserk!, Boynton has published many children's books, as well as several illustrated humor books for the general market. Her books are most typically for very young children, offered in the laminated paperboard format known as board books. Nearly all of Boynton's books have been published by either Workman Publishing or Simon & Schuster. Four of her books have been New York Times best sellers: Chocolate: The Consuming Passion (1982); Yay, You! (2001); Consider Love (2002); and Philadelphia Chickens (2002), which reached the number one position on the list, and was on the list for nearly a year. Three Boynton books are on the Publishers Weekly All-Time Bestselling Children's Books list. More than 30 million copies of her books have been sold.

In 1996, Boynton began writing and producing songs—which she has described as "renegade children's music" — with composer Michael Ford; these songs have been released as albums (Rhinoceros Tap, Philadelphia Chickens, and Dog Train) and also published as book and audio disc sets. The tracks were recorded, under Boynton's direction and Ford's musical direction, by an eclectic roster of actors and musicians, including Blues Traveler, Meryl Streep, Alison Krauss, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, "Weird Al" Yankovic duetting with Kate Winslet, Patti LuPone, The Bacon Brothers with Mickey Hart, Eric Stoltz, the Spin Doctors, Mark Lanegan, Hootie & the Blowfish, Natasha Richardson, Billy J. Kramer, Scott Bakula, Eric Bazilian and Rob Hyman, and The Phenomenauts. Boynton received a 2003 Grammy nomination for Philadelphia Chickens. All three of these albums have been certified gold by the RIAA. Her fourth album, Blue Moo: 17 Jukebox Hits from Way Back Never, was released in November 2007, and includes tracks sung by Brian Wilson, Neil Sedaka, B.B. King, Sha Na Na, Steve Lawrence, Bobby Vee, Gerry & The Pacemakers, and Davy Jones of The Monkees. In November 2010, Boynton produced and released a full-length 300-kazoo plus orchestra performance of Maurice Ravel's Boléro, titled Boléro Completely Unraveled, performed by the Highly Irritating Orchestra. Boynton plays solo kazoo on this recording, noting "I am at the perfect level of musical incompetence for this."

She has written the text for four choral pieces composed by Fenno Heath, Director Emeritus of the Yale Glee Club, all of which have been performed by the Yale Alumni Chorus on international tour.

In 2008, Boynton ventured into filmmaking, creating and directing music videos of her most popular recorded songs. Her first music video, to be released in November 2009 as a book/DVD combination, is One Shoe Blues, starring B.B. King and a cast of assorted sock puppets. In development are Penguin Lament starring John Ondrasik of Five for Fighting, Philadelphia Chickens which is mostly animation and includes cameos by Kevin Bacon and Michael Bacon, and the fully animated Cows.