Peter McCory has been entertaining kids professionally since 1996. A life-long musician, he stumbled upon children's music by accident. While working as a hospital public r elations director, he was asked to provide some music at a hospital-sponsored health and safety day for kids. Peter had enjoyed playing songs for his own children, but had never considered doing it on a larger scale.

When the day finally came, kids flocked around to listen and watch him play in the hospital lobby. Peter was hooked. Never in all his performing years had he found such an eager audience. He had a strange feeling his music would never be the same.

Peter remembered sadly the death several years earlier of one of his favorite local performers, Bob Devlin. Bob had been known as the "one-man band of Washington, DC." Peter began experimenting with his own one-man band sound, and found that he was more coordinated that he thought he was! Playing different instruments simultaneously was fun! He decided to try to keep Bob's memory alive with his own on-man band act.

"I'll never forget the first time I heard Bob play," Peter says. "His music was so fun and uplifting. He was so joyful. I greatly admired him."

Peter polished his one-man band style, and performed around the Northern Virginia area part-time for a couple of years. All along, the thrill of entertaining kids was growing. In 2000 Peter quit his "real job" to go full-time in children's music. Since then he's appeared all over the mid-Atlantic region.

When not performing, Peter loves to write songs. He's written hundreds of songs in numerous different styles over the years. One of his greatest composing accomplishments was writing the script, lyrics and music for a musical play based on Rudyard Kipling's "Captains Courageous." The play was produced in 1995. Since then he's written two other works for the stage, and several children's stories.

Both of Peter's CDs of his children's songs won Parents Choice Recommended Awards and favorable reviews in School Library Journal and Booklist (the journal of the American Library Association).

Most of Peter's songs are based on experiences he has with children. He likes to write funny songs about childhood issues. Many of them end up in his live shows, mixed with other familiar songs for children. A third CD is due out in 2008.

"Making a living performing for children has its challenges," admits Peter. "I'll never get rich doing this. But I'm a person who needs to feel like what I do makes a difference in the world. I feel so full of joy when I perform for children and families. It's been the most rewarding thing I've ever found to do with my life. I think God made me for this."