Oh, the irony. Canadian pop artists Barenaked Ladies have built a career on razor sharp wit, and now have smartly woven their great capacity for humor into their equal capacity for creating great songs kids will love. (Just imagine the repeated giggle scene in the mini-van: “So, kids, what will it be today? The Wiggles, or Kidz Bop, or some Barenaked Ladies?”) They deliver sensitive odes to snacks and vegetables, a reggae toast to pollywogs, a hilarious, Sesame Street-styled song crafted on the old joke, “Why is six afraid of seven?,” and a couple of academic exercises that might stir young vocabulary appetites, to name just a few. BNL manage to rein in their extremely sophisticated wordplay enough to appeal to kids (while delighting parents). For example, on “Crazy ABC’s,” where “’A is for aisle,’b’ is for bdellium, ‘c’ is for czar...” Naked Lady Ed is questioned about his choices, but explains he wanted to get beyond “apple,” “ball,” and “cat,” and as the song moves along (“j is for jalepeno”), it doesn’t seem unreasonable that any half-curious kid will want to know the words and what they mean. This might be a new calling for the Ladies!