Back in the ’90s, offbeat indie-rock heroes They Might Be Giants put a series of mini-songs called “Fingertips” on their album Apollo 18. Many of them were little more than a single phrase, adorned with a musical treatment that was just strange enough to lodge them permanently in your head. They’ve applied a bit of that technique to their two recent addictive kids’ records, Here Come the 123s and Here Come the ABCs; the musical versions of these were mentioned here a while back, but recent versions pack each CD with a must-have bonus — a DVD in which the little learning tunes are accompanied by animated films and introduced by adorable sock-puppet versions of the bandmates John and John. Elsewhere in the DVD aisle are three more restrained pleasures for youngsters, short movies from the ’50s and ’60s that have become such classic fables that one recently inspired a critically praised feature-length remake. Each centers on one object of a child’s devotion: The Red Balloon (the one that was remade) is self-explanatory; White Mane is about a beautiful horse; and Paddle to the Sea is about a little canoe and rider, carved out of wood, who make their way from the Canadian mountains to the ocean, encountering everything from frogs to wildfire along the way. Kids who haven’t had enough of the alphabet after They Might Be Giants’ version should pick up The Alphabet from A to Y with Bonus Letter Z!, another curious celebrity effort. Here, comedian Steve Martin pens memorable alliterative rhymes for each letter, while New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast does illustrations for each. Book-lovers on the other side of the preschool/high school continuum, meanwhile — and maybe their parents — should hunt down The Film Club, the nonfiction account of what happened when a novelist made an unusual deal with his teenaged son. He would let the boy drop out of school, which he hated, on one condition: He had to watch three movies a week, ones Dad chose, and be available to discuss them afterward.

Remember those concert ticket stubs and posters you misplaced some time after college? Well, they’re worth money now as cultural artifacts. These days, collecting rock memorabilia may be akin to building a fine art collection that appreciates in value – the market for it is strong and here to stay, according to a recent New York Times article. If you think you might have something of value, the Rock and Roll Trust offers appraisal and authentication services that can be used for legal, insurance, estate and tax purposes. If you want to start collecting, this historically significant note written to a fan by Brian Jones after the Rolling Stones appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show is so expensive that you have to e-mail or call American Royal Arts to get the price. Take a look at these framed concert posters for shows at the legendary Fillmore West from 1966 to 1971, such as the Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead poster (pictured). Again, if you have to ask how much, you can’t afford them. If you want something that has at least a range of prices, check out Wolfgang’s Vault, a go-to place for it all, where you will find photos of John Lennon before the last concert in San Francisco, Jimi Hendrix at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, or the youthful and cocky Bob Dylan ($1,400 to $5,000). For $535, you can nab this 1978 Bruce concert poster, and for just under $26, you can get this Springsteen Amnesty International backstage pass suitable for framing. Once you register at Wolfgang’s, you can go the Concert Vault and listen to the Who play at the Fillmore East in 1968 and Springsteen playing at Max’s Kansas City in 1973 for free. At the Rock and Roll Emporium, you’ll find Jim Morrison’s autographed 1969 laundry ticket ($6,000), a guitar autographed by Brian Wilson ($1,200) and this autographed Nirvana album ($5,500). Always wanted a pristine copy of Introducing the Beatles (on vinyl!)? The opening bid at eRock Auctions is $2,500. Now, don’t you wish you hadn’t thrown out that KISS lunch box?

The latest way to hear new music on the ‘net is Muxtape, a site aiming to revive some of the old-school joys of making a mix tape. (Note for the kids: Cassette tapes were once the preferred format for sharing favorite tunes with friends or girls/guys you had a crush on; it took hours, days, or weeks to transfer 90 minutes’ worth of records to tape in just the right order, but the finished product was worth it.) All users have to do to set up a free account is choose a name and password, submit their e-mail address, and move up to 12 songs from their computer to the company’s server. You can drag tunes around to change their order, then tell all your friends to go visit you at “YourUserName.muxtape.com.” (Mixes are accessible to other surfers as well.) You’re not supposed to upload MP3s to which you don’t have legal rights, but anecdotal evidence suggests that may not be enforced very strictly — in fact, the first Muxtape I listened to was 100 percent composed of commercial tracks. At any rate, since listeners can’t download the tracks as they listen to them (the files are streaming), record companies probably won’t worry much about piracy. (Plus, tracks have handy “buy this MP3″ links to keep the labels happy.)

For a songwriter who has released such a staggering number of records in a five decades-plus career — I seriously doubt the man himself knows how many — it’s no small claim for a four-disc box set to say it covers Willie Nelson’s whole career. Still, the new One Hell of a Ride does a respectable job, gathering hits and also-rans into a chronological view that flows well from first to last. Starting with scratchy old recordings for forgotten record labels, the track listing quickly works up to honky-tonk classics “Nite Life” and “Hello Walls”; discs two and three showcase the period when songs like “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” made him a household name; and disc four steps briskly through the last few years, when the studio-friendly artist would record reggae numbers one moment and Muppet Movie covers the next. The set is no substitute for Willie’s best individual albums (like the standards outing Stardust, which is due for a two-disc “Legacy Edition” release in July), but it’s an inexpensive way to get acquainted with a daunting body of work. Record collectors who prefer the other kind of reissue — ones that gather rarities from a single period instead of skimming long periods — have plenty of new titles on offer as well. An in-depth look at the early ska recordings of reggae pioneer Lee “Scratch” Perry mostly offers versions that haven’t been on CD before, while a series of digital-only Bobby Womack reissues resurrect albums that have long been hard to find on CD. Meanwhile, two classic albums get special treatment from Rhino: Both Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul and Love’s psychedelic masterpiece Forever Changes are being released as double-CD packages, each offering a pair of versions of the original albums in addition to outtakes, live recordings, and other rarities.

We know your house is only so big, your patience so long, your eardrums only deep enough for so much cotton. Oh, but imagine your heart’s joy as you listen to your children learning and making music in the next room. The chance to express themselves creatively and physically, to work on their coordination and develop a sense of rhythm is a gift you can give them at a young age by bringing musical toys and instruments into the home as early as possible. For preschool musical toys, Discount School Supply has page upon page of rhythm instruments such as a Guiro tone block ($5), a Chilean rainstick ($17), beginner bongo drums ($5.49), and 15-piece rhythm set ($50) that includes jingle clogs, cluster bell, tone block, triangles, cymbals, shakers and a tom-tom. As their brains and bodies develop, consider a toy baby grand piano ($70), available in black, white, or pink for ages three and up. Or perhaps a miniature tartan cover chalice bagpipe ($142) for the same age group? Sitar anyone? A mini is $50, half size $194, three-quarter size with case $254, and all ship free from Musical Instruments for Children, where you can also find drum sets, accordions, and more. You say your four-year-old wants to be a rock star? Get him/her a half-size Les Paul-style electric guitar outfit ($140), although for acoustic guitars THE female guitar company claims to be Luna Aurora. Check out the mini Aurora ($120), the body of which is a blank slate your kid can draw on with damp erase markers. Another instrument for future pop stars is the Casio portable keyboard (pictured; on sale for $70) from Music for Little People. They’ve got a whole page of instruments on sale. Think of it this way: The kids won’t be staring into a computer screen.

The story of rock and roll has been a male-dominated tale for much of the music’s history. Elvis. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Finally the folk-pop lady rockers of the late 1960s and early 1970s get their due in award-winning journalist and author Sheila Weller’s just-released book Girls like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon –– and the Journey of a Generation ($19 at Amazon). Like many of the women who came of age in that tumultuous time in American history, they traversed new territory in an era of the Pill, feminism, civil rights and free love. But King, Mitchell and Simon, lived it and wrote and sang about it – and two of three women were James Taylor’s lovers. Weller describes the work as a “triple biography” in this story behind the story video clip. The book is a juicy and prodigious read. As persnickety Kirkus Reviews says, it’s “essential for understanding how three female superstars survived male chauvinism, romantic disaster and late-career neglect by the music industry to become icons” and “Definitely a guilty pleasure, but still a solid contribution to the story of 20th-century popular music.” Weller based the book on hundreds of interviews, including dozens of the women’s intimates who had never spoken before – including Mitchell’s “Carey” from the song of the same name on the Blue album. One of the most delicious revelations is whom Simon’s hit “You’re So Vain” was about. No, it wasn’t Mick Jagger, but he did sing backup vocals on the song. Was it James Taylor, whom she had just married, or Cat Stevens or Warren Beatty? Okay, well, Simon says, maybe Warren Beatty is part of a composite. Simon’s been keeping people guessing for so many years there’s a whole web site devoted to discovering whom “Vain” was about. Weller –– a contributing editor at Glamour who also writes on social history for Vanity Fair and blogs on politics and culture for The Huffington Post –– is a master of popular narrative nonfiction and the author of six books.

Being a society of self-made individuals who eagerly consume self-improvement and how-to-get-ahead literature, it’s good to know the next big thing. Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) has been around since the 1970s, but right now it’s very hot. What is it? That depends on which web site you visit, but the fundamentals combine hypnosis, learning by imitating the successful behavior patterns of others and reframing negative memories and ideas about oneself into a more positive self-image. Whether applied to personal or professional goals, NLP is intended to effect rapid and long-dreamed-of change in oneself and others. To read an excellent book about the ideas and exercises behind the big words, get Sue Knight’s NLP at Work: How to Model What Works  in Business to Make it Work for You ($23). You can read the table of contents at Amazon and an extremely helpful excerpt that explains NLP as “the study of what works in thinking, language, and behavior,” the reproduction of which “enables you to consistently achieve the results that you want both for yourself, for your business, and for your life.” What seems a bit smarmy about NLP are workshops and CDs that focus solely on the new “influence” and “power” you will gain over others once you’ve mastered the techniques. A chief example is the Mastery InSight Institute’s “How Anyone Can Create a Charismatic, Magnetic Voice!” workshop ($395-$695, in San Francisco), which promises that you’ll “learn to influence people’s unconscious physiological processes with your voice alone!” (in two seconds, no less). But at the NLP Center of New York’s “NLP Level 1 Training for Personal Development” workshop ($3,295), the intention is “to teach people how to heal their past, shape their future and live more fully, right now.” The Wesland Institute in Tucson sells CD and DVD series for those who want to become certified practitioners, as well as personalized tapes ($100 each) to help you reach an individual goal that you describe in an online questionnaire. There are those who swear by NLP and those who just swear when it’s mentioned.

Arvo Pärt, the septuagenarian Estonian composer, ranks among the most important living composers of what for lack of a better term is still called “classical music.” His often ethereal, soaringly beautiful compositions are modern without jarring the listener as some avant-garde works do; they’ve caught on so thoroughly with listeners outside the usual classical circles that one critic was prompted to comment (comparing his success to that of Philip Glass), “Lately I’ve noticed that artificial Glass has increasingly been supplanted by pseudo-Pärt on TV and film soundtracks.” A new package from the giant record label Naxos, The Silence of Being, collects five discs of the composer’s work for the bargain price of $39.99. (A sixth, bonus disc gathers material by such other maverick composers as John Cage and George Crumb; that disc also appears in a new Naxos box devoted to Glass symphonies and concerti.) The set presents an array of Pärt’s music, containing some that is very famous — like “Fratres” and “Tabula Rasa” from 1977, the period during which he developed a signature compositional technique he dubbed “tintinnabulation” — along with more obscure pieces. It offers everything from string quartets to full orchestral works and unaccompanied choirs. The recordings are excellent, and while the CDs’ packaging doesn’t match the evocative design of some Pärt releases from the ECM label, the low price surely makes the tradeoff worthwhile.