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Kootenay Children’s Festival returns for 30th year
The Kootenay Children’s Festival returns for a 30th year on Saturday, May 9 in Cranbrook.
The free festival will once again be held in front of Cranbrook’s Key City Theatre with the Famous Duck Man, Kellie Haines Ventriliquist and PT the Clown providing live, interactive entertainment and bouncy tents, face painting, CU Express Kid’s Train, Kiki the Eco Elf & Johnny Ogden, Neezar, Twinkle Toes and Minnie Me, plus more on hand to complete the entertainment experience for the children.
The headliner for this year’s festival is internationally loved children’s entertainment Charlotte Diamond (pictured above), who will hold two performances at Key City Theatre, with a 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. show. Admission is free but tickets must be picked up at the Key City Theatre office.
Charlotte has performed several times at the Key City Theatre throughout her career and she is very pleased to return to the Kootenay area.
Charlotte lives with her family in Richmond. Born and raised in Vancouver, she graduated from the University of B.C. with a Bachelor of Secondary Education, majoring in Zoology and French. She took further studies at Laval University, Quebec, in French Language and taught Science, French and Music at the junior-high school level for 12 years.
Charlotte has had a life-long interest in music. She sang with local folk groups, including performing intro sets for Pete Seeger and Tom Paxton. When her own children came along, she began singing and writing songs for them and also developed a preschool music program in her community. This led to performances for her children’s parent-participation preschool, which mushroomed into requests for workshops, school concerts and family shows around Vancouver and throughout British Columbia.
Charlotte formed her Hug Bug Band and proceeded with the independent production and release of ‘10 Carrot Diamond,’ which won the Canadian Juno Award (1986). Her career turned professional and international overnight, and 10 Carrot Diamond is a Certified Gold Record in Canada. A frequent headliner for the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, she is best known for favourites like, Four Hugs a Day; I am a Pizza (Je suis une pizza, Soy una Pizza)); Octopus (Slippery Fish); La Bamba; All the Nations Like Banana; and Dicky Dinosaur. Her well- known song, Octopus (Slippery Fish), was published in 2013 as a Children’s Board Book, Slippery Fish in Hawai’i.
Charlotte presently has 13 recordings, a string of awards, including five Parents’ Choice Awards and three American Library Association Awards, (to mention a few), two nationally televised videos, and two Music / Resource books. Her latest CD, ‘24 Carrot Diamond – The Best of Charlotte Diamond,’ features 24 of her best-known songs, recorded over the past 25 years.
Charlotte tours throughout Canada and the U.S.A., and has had three concert tours to Costa Rica, on the invitation of that country’s First Lady, UNICEF and the Canadian Embassy. Charlotte is trilingual and has three recordings in French, and two in Spanish (Soy una Pizza and Todo el Mundo Come Banana!). She was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Commemorative Medal “in recognition of her exemplary support of UNICEF,” as well as being named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International, “in appreciation of significant assistance given to the furtherance of better understanding and friendly relations among peoples of the world.”
Her music, as well as being lively and singable, inspires children to care for each other and to celebrate the diversity of our cultural mosaic with songs like “Leave the World a Little Better”. Charlotte’s concerts are fun for kids but parents and grandparents will be captivated by her music, as well.
For more information please visit Charlotte’s Web site: www.charlottediamond.com
The Kootenay Children’s Festival runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 9.
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