[1] Merrill reputedly uttered the phrase "I hate music" due to her exasperation with Bernstein's constant piano playing and coaching of singers.

[1][3] Written in a light-hearted and satirical style, the work has inflections of jazz idioms and at times has an improvised quality which reflects the spontaneity of a child's singing.

The natural, unforced sweetness of child expressions can never be successfully gilded; rather will it come through the music in proportion to the dignity and sophisticated understanding of the singer".

[2] In 1946 Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Blanche Thebom programmed the work for recital performance in Kansas City, Missouri.

New York magazine described it as "deftly summing up this country's long standing bifurcated attitude towards the arts in general: a desperate yearning for high culture on the one hand and a deep-rooted suspicion of it on the other".