It’s rare to see yourself depicted so tangibly in a novel. In many ways Lindsay Zier-Vogel’s Fun Times Brigade is about me. The protagonist, Amy Scholl, is a struggling singer-songwriter turned children’s musician who is grappling with the vicissitudes of success and artistic fulfillment. Me too. She is also a parent experiencing the profound joys and relentless demands of parenthood. Same here. But it goes eerily further. She met her bandmates in Guelph (my hometown) and her husband works in the Math Department at the University of Waterloo (where I work in the History Department). The book is very Southern Ontario. In typical Zier-Vogel fashion, she crafted a love letter to the region—a grown-up version of her award-winning children’s book Dear Street.
You don’t have to be Canadian to appreciate the book’s setting, but it helps. Whether it’s Sleep Country Canada jingles, references to Tim Hortons and Long & McQuade, or binge-watching Schitt’s Creek, this is a pleasantly familiar world. And then there’s the name-dropping of Canadian artists like it’s going out of style: from superstars like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell to deeper cuts like Valdy and Garth Hudson to a who’s who of indie darlings like The New Pornographers, Basia Bulat, Jill Barber—the list goes on and on. And, inevitably, Raffi and Sharon, Lois and Bram.
Other details are more universal: the joyful tedium of sleepless nights getting to know a brand-new human. Or the sorrowful tedium of the saying goodbye to an older, deeply loved one. There are marital tensions, frustrating family dynamics, and career uncertainties. Most compelling is the relationship between Amy and her “found family,” the other members of the titular Brigade, veteran folk musicians Fran and Jim Powell. These relationships are the heart of the story. They capture the almost sacred experience of making music with likeminded souls. But their shared musicality is not enough to keep them together. Gradually, Amy learns the value and necessity of sustaining these precious connections.
I appreciate Zier-Vogel’s absorbing descriptions of music and her characters’ relationship with the craft. She viscerally portrays the excitement of a live concert, picking out aspects of arrangements and how they fuel the performers. She notes the pain in Amy’s fingers when she returns to the guitar. She realistically describes songwriting, the fumbling articulation of a chord progression or lyric, in ways that will be familiar to musicians and intriguing to general readers. The author clearly has a fluency with music that she has woven into her characters’ identities.
Zier-Vogel also captures the insecurities inherent in children’s music. At one point, Amy becomes frustrated with “only” making songs about crayons and racoons. She has a go in “grown up” music (as we call it), joining a Broken Social Scene-esque indie collective. To her chagrin, her new bandmates call her Fun Times Amy as she struggles to be taken seriously. For the most part, however, their condescension exists in her head. They generally respect her as an artist. We constantly have to navigate this as children’s musicians, and Zier-Vogel is right to assume that we probably don’t give enough credit to our peers in other genres. As someone who has written books for both children and adults (Fun Times Brigade—with its sex, drugs and innumerable f-bombs—is definitely not for children), the author likely has personal insights into this insecurity.
I have two criticisms. This is not meant to be pedantic. Artistic liberties can no doubt be justified for the sake of this great story. But I’m both a Canadian children’s musician and a professional historian, so I would be remiss not to set the record straight.
Zier-Vogel did her due diligence, interviewing Fred Penner, Sharon Hampson and Bram Morisson—Canadian children’s music legends. But there is a disconnect: she essentially depicts a 1980s-style children’s musician in the 2020s. Canada in the 1980s was ground zero for the global children’s music explosion with the runaway success of Raffi and other celebrated artists like Fred Penner and Sharon, Lois and Bram. Their records went platinum. They sold out stadiums and reached a global audience through their CBC shows. Amy’s experience, which follows this pattern, seems anachronistic. The scene is different in 2025. Most children’s musicians today perform in libraries and work other jobs to pay the bills. Of course, a Raffi-style celebrity is more interesting than a Relative Minors-style artist who plays one show a month and works a day job.
The modern children’s music scene was absent from the book. Today, camaraderie with other children’s musicians is one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. At one point, with the Brigade on a hiatus, Amy wonders “if there are any other kids’ musicians putting out albums, vying to take their place.” But the kindie scene (as we call it) is not inherently competitive. We prefer to celebrate each other’s victories. At one point, someone calls the Brigade “the only kid’s music that didn’t make want her want to stab her eyes out,” and Amy replies, calling it “the biggest compliment.” We all hear this all the time. What they really mean is “You’re way better than Baby Shark.” But the proper response is “Have you heard of The Oot n’ Oots? Or Darrelle London? Or the Zing Zangs?” and the list goes on—all excellent musicians who make music for children and families, and all unlikely to induce eye-gouging.
Another missed opportunity has to do with something that we obsess over: purpose. Apart from Jim saying that one Brigade song would be “a kids’-song fuck-you to the anti-vaxxers,” they don’t discuss why they want to make music for children. One would think that their goal is to get rich and famous. But, as noted, that’s not the reality for most children’s musicians (or for musicians generally). I would have liked to hear Amy, Jim and Fran reflect on their motivations. Is their goal to educate? Or simply to entertain children and enrich their lives? All musicians answer these questions in different ways, but children’s musicians have to be particularly circumspect, since the brains listening to our songs are still in development. It’s a big responsibility. Our fans might end up singing our tunes for decades—as anyone who randomly starts humming “Baby Beluga” in the grocery store knows. As in other genres, some of us see our music as a means to a positive end, while some see it as art for art’s sake. By discussing the value of children’s music, Zier-Vogel would could have broached interesting points about the value of art, about commercialization in music, and about children as members of society.
All told, these are major issues for a children’s musician, but minor issues with the novel. She told an excellent story. I’m impressed by its depth and its breadth. It deals with birth and death and so much in between. I was so emotionally invested in Amy that her poor decisions left me infuriated. I felt the bittersweet nostalgia for my own childhood and for those seemingly endless early days with my own kids. It’s a great read. But, in the words of another children’s media icon: you don’t have to take my word for it.
The Fun Times Brigade, by Lindsay Zier-Vogel. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Book*hug Press, May 2025. 362 pages. $20.00, paper.
Matt Robertshaw is a historian at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. He has published numerous articles about Haitian history and translated multiple novels. He creates video-essays via Sleeper Hit History on YouTube. He also plays in an award-winning children’s music band, The Relative Minors.
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Heavy Feather Review 