Described by some as the Rolling Stones for the pre-school set, The Monkey Bunch will be giving Merritt a rock concert for short people (and their parents) next Tuesday at the Merritt Civic Centre.

The Toronto-based group – made up of performer/writer Shoshana Sperling, musician/songwriter Maury LaFoy and their musical friends – play songs for people who love music and want their kids to love it too.

Their latest CD titled Power to the Little People features tracks like “Your Mother Should Know,” “Don’t Let Your Cars Idle,” and “Studio Brew” and uses a variety of musical styles to engage children while including fun, educational messages about the environment.

Asked what Merritt can expect from next week’s concert, Sperling said the audience will get a rock concert that will make them want to sing and dance.

“It’s like going to see the Stones, but I’m not Mick Jagger – I think he’s taller than me,” she said. “We play a lot of rock songs and a lot of the humour that happens on stage is aimed at the parents, so they appreciate that they’re part of it.”

During a phone interview on Tuesday, Sperling said she and her husband didn’t set out to start a band for children; they just “fell into it.” Her husband worked as a musician in several bands, and she participated in theatre and comedy.

“We didn’t have any money and we didn’t have gifts for our nieces and nephews so we decided to put together a three-song demo,” she said. “They loved it and the kids at their daycares loved it.”

Since then the pair has released two CD’s – the first features a mix of songs they grew up listening to, and the second a handful of original songs, some of them inspired by experiences with their five-year-old son.

“A lot of inspiration came with being alone with him,” Sperling said. “Ideas came as I did a lot of those tasks that adults might find really boring and songs started to come as I did activities with him and realized what he liked and what music inspired him.”

What she found was that children can enjoy the same music as their parents, whether it was Queen or the Beatles. This meant that writing children’s music that adults could enjoy wasn’t very hard at all.

“We don’t want to play music that we don’t like; it’s preferable to love what you do,” she said. “We’re not going to make music for kids that talks down to them. Why shouldn’t kids have real music and real instruments?”

Another feature of The Monkey Bunch’s music are the environmental messages they incorporate.

“I was raised by parents who were very socially active and when I was a kid it was normal to go out to a peace march. I’ve always felt that kids are a part of it,” said Sperling. “This is their planet and it’s unfortunate that we are kind of wrecking it.

“If I came home and a whole bunch of people had wrecked my house, I’d be upset about it.”

Through their songs like “Don’t Let Your Cars Idle” the group tries to empower children and, in the words of Dr. Seuss, teach them “a person is a person no matter how small,” she said.

While this will be the first western Canadian tour for The Monkey Bunch, the musicians have drummed up a fair amount of praise for their music with a 2011 Juno nomination for Children’s Album of the Year, a 2011 Indies nomination for Children’s Artist/Group of the Year and a recent International Song Writing Award for their crowd pleaser “Poopie Diaper,” which Merrittonians can expect to hear on Tuesday.

The concert will be on May 22 at 5 p.m. at the Civic Centre. Tickets are $10 for children and $20 for adults.