This has been an amazing year of music in the world of children's books! There are stories and CDs to calm, excite, teach, and of course, enjoy!
Barrie Carson Turner's new series includes titles: The Living Clarinet, The Living Flute, The Living Piano and The Living Violin (each from Knopf, $25.00; ages 9 and up) All four include information about how the instrument is made, techniques for playing, history, and its place in the orchestra. The book is packaged with a CD whose tracks are keyed to the book and contain some of the greatest music ever written for each instrument.
Anita Ganeri's The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra is filled with photos and comes with a CD narrated by Ben Kingsley. Each instrument is introduced separately, in sections with music as familiar as Paul Dukas's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and featuring much music composed by Benjamin Britten who originally composed a symphony entitled "The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" for a 1945 film.
Bob Barner's Dem Bones (Chronicle Books, $13.95; ages 4-8) breathes new life into the old skeleton song. The bright graphics are easy to read and sing and filled with humor and music. The skeleton plays guitar, tuba, and a host of other instruments, making their introduction easy. And to increase the multimedia effect of this book , on each page is a brief discussion of the trivia, terminology and function of the featured bone.
Michka Assayas and Claude Meunier's The Beatles and The Sixties (Holt, $19.95; retros 12 to 60+) recounts the life and times of the "fab four". Part of the w5 (who, where, what, when and why) series, the book places the music and lives of these four-working class born Liverpool youths, in context of world events, fashion, art and culture. Book covers everything from the the influence of Brian Epstein to miniskirts and rebellion. Trivia, photos, and graphics are sure to draw reader.
Libba Moore Gray's Little Lil of Little Lil and the Swing-Singing Sax (Simon and Schuster, $16.00; ages 7-11) lives with her mama, Big Lil, and her Uncle Sudi, the Music-Making Man. The family is poor, but Sudi's sax playing drives away sad times , until he trades the instrument to buy his sister medicine. Then " the laughter stayed away while the horn gathered dust on a dingy cluttered shelf" until Little Lil manages to bring back music and joy. The music of the text is a perfect match for the theme and the strong bold colors of Lisa Cohen's illustrations capture the rhythms of story.
Rabbit Ears consistently packages sure-to-please music and story combinations. This fall they've released seven remarkable new offerings including: Noah and the Ark told by Kelly McGillis with music by the Paul Winter Consort ( hardcover book and cassette, $19.95; ages 5 and up); The Firebird told by Susan Sarandon with music by Mark Isham (hardcover book and cassette;$19.95; ages 6 and up); and a retelling of a Native American tale, Princess Scargo and The Birthday Pumpkin, told by Geena Davis with music by Michael Hedges (Hardcover and cassette; $26.95; ages 4 and up),
And what would the story of music be without its people? Alan Schroeder's picture book biography of Louis Armstrong, Satchmo's Blues (Doubleday, $15.95; ages 7-11) shows a young boy who sees the beauty of horn playing instead of the "broken bottles and kicked-in fences" that surround him. Wisely Schroder focuses on Louis' determination to buy his first horn. Floyd Cooper highlights largely monochromatic illustrations with bits of color that mark the warmth of family and community.
Young children (and their parents) will enjoy a cassette of The Teddy Bears' Picnic (book and cassette from HarperCollins, $ 19.95; ages 1-8) performed by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman. The accompanying book illustrated by Bruce Watley is filled with rock and roll visual quips.
For those drawn to the delight of silly songs, there's Sandra Boynton's Rhinoceros Tap and 14 Other Seriously Silly Songs (Workman Publishing, $15.95; ages 0- adult). It comes with pictures, words, and a cassette to inspire singing, reading, dancing, listening...or oinking. Boynton never lets you down in terms of humor, rhythms, originality, singability or whimsy.
Everything Sandra Boynton touches is filled with humor. Her Grunt: Pigorian Chant from Snouto Domoinko De Silo (Workman Publishing, $10.95; ages 10 - adult) is performed by the Yale Glee Club and on the surface is as soothing as traditional Gregorian singing. But if you take a closer look....there are worlds of difference. The forty minute CD comes with a small book that cites the setting as a "non-existent farmstead" located in "a remote corner of an insignificant country on a forgotten continent." The music follows the pigs through their day with chants like "Ore-snay, Ore-snay" to the dialoguing Meditation in the Barn that includes a Allemooia chorus. The farmer and all his animals chant in Latin, except of course, the pigs who sing in Pig Latin.
For two years, my daughter had a wonderful piano teacher, who cajoled, calmed, and brought her to understand and love the language of music. Last month she moved, but a week later, my daughter went to a music store to buy sheet music for a piece she wanted to learn and she's spent hours (of her own volition) puzzling out the notes breaking the code. This column about music is dedicated to Jodi DiCicco and all the other music teachers who unlock the doors of music for our children.
I know from watching my daughter grow musically, that it's become an expressive outlet for her. There are several books that show children who feel music and respond.
Fatima Shaik's The Jazz of Our Street (Dial, $15.99; ages 5-8) follows a young girl and her brother into the New Orleans streets when a jazz band gathers like "travelers from many distant parts of the world who understand only the language of sound". The band plays the music of her life; "slippers slapping and scraping on the long gravel streets" and men "who carry home at daybreak tunes full of memories" . The whole of her neighborhood winds through the neighborhood in a "second line." Floating in the text's melodic images are explanations of these dance movements which can be traced to West Africa and the sense of history and power that the connection of music and dance create. E.B. Lewis' watercolors capture emotion, movement, and the joy of a neighborhood dancing together.
Young Dexter, in Linda England's The Old Cotton Blues , (McElderry Books, $16.00; ages 4-8) loves "three things: his mama, the smell of pork chops frying, and the sound of Johnny Cotton's clarinet". The clarinet makes him feel "the blue-down blues, and the deep-down-shaking, slow-laughing feel-goods." England's lyricism does much to cement the connection of emotion and music, explaining Dexter's desperate desire to own the clarinet his mother can't afford. No one understands like Johnny Cotton who gives the young boy a new dream and the Mississippi harp once played by his father. In Dexter's hands the harmonica finally turns him into a music maker, a player of his feelings, and gives him a fourth thing to love.
History has a personal delivery in Evelyn Coleman's To Be A Drum (Whitman, $16.95; ages 5-9). Daddy Wes tells his two children "long before time... on the continent of Africa, the rhythm of the earth beat for the first people". And he describes how the beat moved through bodies, pushed out from fingers, and a drum was born. Drums were taken away from slaves, but they who became the drum, pushing out the earth's spirit with their entire bodies . In a brief, but poignant vignettes of African-American history, Coleman tells how her people embraced this beat; courage became drums in war, or minds became drums in inventions,and drums became communities, art, story and dreams. The book ends as Daddy Wes walks off with his children, "the heartbeat of the earth sounding their way." Incredible textural collages by Aminah Robinson become the drums of Coleman's story, beating out history, beauty, and a richness of movement and color.
Paintings by Michele Wood and text by Toyomi Igus lead readers through a history of African-American music in i see the rhythm (Children's Book Press, $15.95; ages 6 and up). Each luscious page is a collage of poetry, history and visual images which form a tribute to the ingenuity and spirit of a people captured in their music. In "Origins" , Igus' poetry describes the griots' stories as "the rhythm of our beginnings...the pulse of a people and a land in harmony" and Woods accompanies with collages of masks and patterning to praise a past and bear witness to the sorrow of the coming of slave traders. The artists' duet leads readers through fourteen different periods of musical evolution. The book begins with early African rhythms and circles back as a singers raps: "Africa's inside me/taking back her child./ She's giving me my pride/ and setting me free."
Andrea and Brian Pinkney have collaborated on several splendid picture book biographies. Now Duke Ellington (Hyperion, $15.95, ages 5-) joins their collaborative titles. As a small boy, Duke hated taking piano lessons, until he heard the "soul-rousing romp" of ragtime. Later he entertained with his "fine-as-pie good looks and flashy threads" and his compositions were "smoother than a hairdo sleeked with pomade.: While Andrea fills the telling of his life with rhythmic lilting dialect and writing studded with era idioms, Brian keeps time with his scratch-board etchings full of the kind of movement Duke inspired. There are also lots of facts about Duke's famous songs, the members of his band, and an amazing capturing of what the music sounds like.
Virgina Kroll's Faraway Drums (Little Brown, $14.95; ages 6-10) begins when Jamila Jefferson and her little sister Zakiya move to a new neighborhood and their mother leave them alone to work for their support. Both are frightened and uncomfortable, but Jamila's in charge and she gathers herself to take charge by remembering her great-grandmama's stories of Africa. Then strange banging becomes African drums, canned spaghetti becomes West African fou-fou, and screaming brakes are elephants coming to the watering hole. One by one, Jamila transforms uncomfortable city sounds until she can see "the Africa in her (younger sister's) eyes". The sibling and community comfort are present in dialect and the warm paintings by Floyd Cooper.
Music is a bone of contention between Reginald who loves his violin and his Papa, coach of the Dukes' baseball team in Gavin Curtis' The Batboy and His Violin (Simon and Schuster, $16.00; ages 5-10). Set in the era of the Negro Leagues, the tensions mount as Papa's Dukes lose and Reginald's inept skills as batboy add to the anxiety. While he may be a bat bumbler, when relegated to the bench, Reginald gracefully releases strains of Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, bringing success on the field and comfort off it. Ultimately, it's not the wins and losses that matter so much as the love of this son and his father. Illustrations by E.B. Lewis accent emotions, delineate the period, and this very specific story has subtleties that reveal facts about the momentousness of this period in African-American sports and civil rights history.
Don Gilmor gives us the lighter side of family expectations in The Fabulous Song (Kane Miller, $12.95; ages 5-9). Frederic Chopin Pipkin is born into a musical family who assumes he must be talented. But Frederic doesn't like the piano and worse, it doesn't like him. It "sounds like a brick crashing through a window"and Mr. Stricter, the piano teacher tells the disappointed Pipkins he'll never learn. There follow a succession of instruments and failures, each expressed in a way that all music students, past and present, will recognize the truth and the humor. Finally, at Frederic's seventh birthday when his extended family gathers and attempts to play, their combined attempts sound "more like a herd of buffalo arguing about the weather than a birthday party". But Frederic waves a wooden spoon, raps his uncle three times on the head, and in the ensuing silence draws from the various and sundry instruments the most fabulous song any of them have ever heard. While they puzzle as to it's origin, Frederic hums to himself, hearing a new "stupendous song" in his head, imagining new ways to lead the Pipkin Family Orchestra into harmony. Illustrator Marie-Louise Gay draws comic figures to accent the humor and floating stanzas of music reflect story's mood ; they are.jagged in less harmonic story moments and becomes a lovely ribbon of rhythms by the conclusion.
The West has never seen real adventure until they behold Carlotta Carusa, the world-famous opera singer in Candace Fleming's Westward Ho, Carlotta! (Atheneum, $16.00; ages 5-9). Carlotta silences wolves as she trills Prokofiev's symphony, Peter and the Wolf, ends a drought with an aria from Britten's Noah's Flood, and defeats outlaws and their leader, Skullneck Sam, with a crescendoed blast from Puccini's Girl of the Golden West. Sam's baritone voice pours from him to join her soprano, creating a "divine duet" that brings the town to tears and Sam into the role of sheriff. Silly in concepts and pictures, this musical slapstick introduces terms and pieces in ways that will educate and intrigue.
If you've never experienced singing a book, there are all kinds of opportunities in these new picture books. Several books take familiar favorites and find new expression.
Young children's favorite, The Farmer in the Dell (Holiday House, $15.95; all ages) has new illustrations by Alexandra Wallner who's Americana folk art style gives a proper sense of history to a song that's filled early memories for generations. We see a wedding in a small church, a happy country reception, birthing in a home filled with quilts, crockery, and put-up preserves Lushness outside and warmth inside are enlivened by a small bit of conflict between cat and rat.
Alison Jackson transforms a classic childhood song into Thanksgiving hilarity in I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Pie (Dutton, $14.99; ages 3-8). A little old lady gulps down a dry pie, swills cider which ":rumbled and mumbled and grumbled" inside her. That's only the beginning; hysterics and hysteria mount as Jackson's funny words and Judith Schachner's silly illustrations show the old lady growing as a big as a...(appropriate to the theme) Thanksgiving's day float!
Those who remember clapping out the rhythms of Miss Mary Mack (Little Brown, $14.95; ages 4-8) will enjoy the new adaption by Mary Ann Hoberman and the playful illustrations by Nadine Westcott. They extend the story until the little girl makes a pet of the pachyderm and all the neighborhood children play happily ever after in the elephant-shaped pool created when he falls from the sky. Hoberman never lets the rhythm fall and Westcott keeps up her end with humorous details.
The Gullah classic Cumbayah is newly illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Morrow, 16.00; ages 2 and up) who takes the original, adds some new verses, and then invites reader-singers to do the same. Cooper's soft paintings take us on a world tour of communities. The book is a series of portraits of people who fulfill the song's lyrics with marvelous expression. Two African children laugh as they play in a rambling tree, a Middle Eastern boy covers his head for someone's hurting and busy people rush by a woman and her son crouched in a doorway in "someone needs you". Cooper's monochromes preserve the classicism of the song and use present situations to show how the song lives today.
Dr. Ysaye Barnwell, of Sweet Honey and the Rock, tells and sings No Mirrors In My Nana's House (HBJ, $18.00; ages 3 and up) on a CD that comes tucked in a beautiful picture book designed by Synthia Saint James. James, whose paintings are quickly catapulting her in to illustrative stardom, uses strong vibrant colors, a perfect match for the power of the song. The words of Barnwell's song hold a poignant message for all young girls and therefore seem an appropriate translation into picture books. Within the lyrics lurks a young girl who grows up free from the self-judging imposed by mirrors,. She knows love not hate, hears noise as music, because of her grandmother who helps her see "beauty in everything was in her eyes like the rising of the sun."
When school begins remember music and reading. They are both perfect cures for the frenetic moods that school starts inspires. These recently published books about music will inspire laughter, play, calm discussion, song and thought.
Bruce Koscielniak's The Incredible Orchestra: An Introduction to Musical Instruments and the Symphony Orchestra (Houghton Mifflin, $15.00; ages 7 and up) tells how the orchestra grew from just a few players to over two hundred musicians during the last four centuries. Author, illustrator and musician, Koscielniak, strolls children through a history of instruments beginning with the 1600's and pre-Orchestra times, through Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Jazz and present day periods. His overviews of the ages are succinct and his historically contextual descriptions of the invention of instruments make sense. Koscielniak delivers much of his information by labeling pictures with small sound bites. In this way, he explains instruments and their mechanics, names musicians and crafts people, and discusses terminology, like tempo. The text is peppered with the kind of trivia children enjoy. The author tells them that early strings were made of dried animal intestines and the trombone was called sacbut in the Middle Ages. This book is a great introduction in to a symphony experience, but because of the wealth of information, I recommend reading it in small bits.
An incredibly through and illuminating collection of biographies comes in Eleanora Tate's African American Musicians (Wiley, $22.95; ages 10 and up). The twenty-seven biographies are concise, well-written, diverse in representation, accompanied by photographs or illustrations, and separated into time periods for clearer presentation. Tate begins with "The Early Years" and Elizabeth Greenfield, a slave from the 1800's who sang her way into freedom, fame, the founding of an opera country, inspiring rising stars, and concerts in Europe and the US (where she faced incredible prejudice and some danger). She ends "Modern Times" and Queen Latifah whose uplifting hip-hop fights sexism and drug use. Latifah chose her Muslim name in childhood; its meaning, "delicate, sensitive and kind... described who she really was inside." This statement represents Tate's style of historical sketches; she covers the hearts of those she profiles, as well as their talents and contributions.
There are a number of new stories about children who love music. Tia is the heroine of William Miller's The Piano (Lee and Low Books, $15.95, ages 7-9). Tia lives in the turn of the century South where she searches out music while her mother and brothers work in the cotton mills. She's used to the sounds of steel guitar, but one day, while wandering in new neighborhoods, Tia is captivated by a melody that reminds her of "castles, mountains, and deep new snow". It's the classical music pouring from Miss Hartwell's record player that mesmerizes Tia and she becomes a maid to this wealthy white woman so that she can be near the lovely sounds. Tia's desire to learn to play the beautiful piano coaxes the arthritic Miss Hartwell beyond her pain. The two care for each other and their shared love of music makes for a relationship that crosses age and color lines.
Most children do not like slice-of-life stories and at first Gwendolyn Battle-Lavert's rich sensory detailing in The Music in Derrick's Heart (Holiday House, $16.95; ages 6-9) seemed to be heading in that direction. Very quickly, however, the author blends her descriptions, vivid characterizations, and idiom-strong dialogue with meaning and themes that make for enduring stories. Battle-Lavert's starts, "the heat lay on Derrick's front porch like a wool coat" and young Derrick's expectations rise like the temperature when he catches sight of Uncle Booker T., the elderly man who has promised to teach him to play harmonica over the summer. Derrick is infused with Uncle Booker T.'s vitality as the two move "with the rhythm in the streets". The readers' emotional connections grow as they register Derrick's drive to imitate music, his frustration as Uncle Booker T. reminds him to "slow down and take your time", and finally his accomplishment at learning to mirror his world in songs. The author has created a bluesy narrative that will haunt readers. Colin Bootman's oils are sometimes muted like a quiet hymn, other times swagger with the verve of Derrick's spontaneous marching band, and make for a visual accompaniment that harmonizes with the melodies of Battle-Lavert's story.
The small boy in Howard Kaplan's Waiting to Sing (DK Ink, $15.95; ages 7-10) wants to put a piano on his family tree because it's the center of his world and a part of all he remembers. His father plays the piano while his mother sings, friends circle around the piano to sing, and he goes to sleep with the faint sound of gentle music "like an August blanket." When his mother dies, grief fills the house and there is no music and little talk until finally the father plays a song the mother loved. Then, the boy tells readers, "we let the piano speak for us. It was our way of crying, the way it had once been our way of laughing." And so the healing process begins, the beauty of the music opening doors back to the love the house once held. The lyricism of the text is a perfect expression for the odes of this small boy's life.
Children who love fantasy, music, and animals will enjoy the adventures of two new fictional heroes. Walter Dean Myers' The Blues of Flats Brown (Holiday House, $16.95; ages 6-9) tells the story of a dog who has grown up in the junkyard of A. J. Grubbs. Grubbs is a man so mean he even hates himself, spitting on his image in a mirror every time he sees it. Flats has a sense of family and home because of Caleb, an old good-hearted dog, and the old National guitar he loves to play. When Grubbs decides to turn his dogs into fighting hounds, they flee, and so begins a chase around the country and the building of Flat's musical career. Finally, Grubbs catches Flats and hears a song about "a man nobody understood and everybody thought was bad because he lived in a junkyard". Grubbs is moved and he returns home, leaving Flats to disappear into the anonymity he wants. The story reads like a blues tune, full of rhythm, pathos, and themes of railroads and lost homes.
Gael Cresp's The Tale of Gilbert Alexander Pig (Barefoot Books, $15.95; ages 6-9) merges the traditional Three Little Pigs story with the legendary career of Motown jazz trumpeter Gil Askey, a friend of the author and conductor for Diana Ross and the Supremes. Gil, a small black pig leaves home with his trumpet, walking by day and playing his trumpet to the stars all night. All goes well until white Wolf hears the trumpet and threatens Gil's food, shelter, safety and, worst of all, music. Gil flees several times until finally, determined to earn money he plays in the streets, cafes, and night clubs until he can build himself a brick house. The two strike a deal; they set up life together sharing food, shelter and at night Gil teachers the Wolf how to play the trumpet "and they lived happily ever after". Cresp writes a tale children will enjoy with adult themes that never get in the way.
Young children love to sing a book and they have opportunity to do so with three new song books. Two old classics have been newly illustrated. Jane Cabrera uses vibrant colors and lots of motion in Over in the Meadow (Holiday House, $16.95; ages 0-5). Joan Paley uses collage to illustrate Walt Whippo's Little White Duck (Little Brown, $13.95; ages 0-6) A classic children's song has a new rewrite with Lenny Hort's The Seals on the Bus (Holt, $15.95; ages 0-6) . Hort teams up with illustrator G. Brian Karas to show the kind of disasters when animals steal the show.
Two recent books have music tucked inside their covers. Howdi Do is a great collaboration for younger children (Candlewick Press, $12.99; ages 4-8). The title song is by Wood Guthrie, pictures by Vladimir Radunsky, and there's a CD led by Kurt Hoffman and his Band of Weeds The title song is the focus for Radunsky's illustrations, but the CD contains the title song, two others as well as a conversation between illustrator and young children (which unfortunately goes on too long). Guthrie wrote these songs for his daughter and they are filled with children's feelings, and silly sounds which make the songs dynamic and easy to learn. The performance cast is broad in terms of talents, instruments and voices.
John Henry: The Legendary Folk Hero, written by Brad Kessler, read by Denzel Washington, with music by BB King (Rabbit Ears, Simon and Schuster, $10.95;ages 5 and up) is a perfect blend of talents. This is the story of the legendary African-American folk hero, "born with a hammer in his hand" who "went into a deep sleep" after fighting the advent of the steam drill with his pounding hammer and constant song.
The tape begins with BB King singing the traditional song about John Henry. Then Denzel reads a story studded with similes and rocking with rhythms which give it a blusey feel while BB King keeps strains of blues guitar happening in the background.
If you have a wild summer planned, or you have active children, remember music, the magical secret that has the power to calm savage beasts. For many children, reading has the same power. Pairing reading and music, creates a sure success for calming down frenetic days, and also creating fun on the days that grow dull.
There are some wonderful new musical tape/CD releases of music families will enjoy. Naomi Judd's Love Can Build a Bridge (HarperCollins, $15.95; ages 3-9),has a message children are never too young, nor adults too old, to hear. Illustrator Suzanne Duranceau pictures emotion-strong in views of children who are reaching out to each other to demonstrate Judd's lyrics: "Love can build a bridge/ between your heart and mine.? Love can build a bridge. / Don't you think it's time?" appear on each page. Duranceau translates Judd's powerful words into concepts children can understand. And Judd's incredible tape adds to the picture and word riches.
A second celeb music book,Island in the Sun, (Dial, $15.99; ages 4-8)is co-written by Lord Burgess and Harry Belefonte. Primitive-style lllustrations by Alex Ayliffe show the beauties of island life as they picture the song's descriptions of the fun of calypso, cane cutting, casting nets, and carnival. You may remember this song, but if you don't the piano music and words are included. I have to admit, I wished for a tape or CD, but parents with, or without musical talents, will enjoy sharing the culture with their children.
One of my favorite children's tapes has been re-released, . Carole King's musical of Maurice Sendak's Really Rosie (Harper Children's Audio; $14.95)is a great way to learn while singing. The songs come from Sendak's work and include wonderful ways to learn numbers, alphabet, months and more. All have the delightful humor, rhythms and rhymes, and excitement this collaboration yields.
Summer's a great time to learn about the orchestra. You can begin with basics at home and then travel on a musical field trip. Picture books are a good place for the young to start and this familiarity is increased by choosing a book by a known author. The same bats that delighted young fans in Kathi Appelt's theatrical Bat Jamboree (Mulberry, $4.95) are back in Bats on Parade (Morrow, $16.00; ages 3-6). Kathi Appelt sets up parade excitement as an animal audience lines the streets. Then we're off and rhyming with piccolo-players, flautists, cadets playing clarinets, all the way to the 100 sousaphones! Numbers + instruments + rhyming rhythms = a book children will love.
Those who remember learning about instruments with classical music will be happy to see the re-release of a tape by Carol Channing and The Cincinnati Pops Orchestra who perform Serge Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and George Kleinsinger's Tubby the Tuba (Harper Children's Audio, $14.95) Both are superior story introductions to the instruments of an orchestra.
Another classic introduction comes with a new version of Saint-Saens' Carnival of the Animals (Holt, $19.95). The CD is packaged with a hardcover book that contains commentary and helpful questions by Barrie Carson Turner and bright, rollicking illustrations by Sue Williams. Turner writes thoughtfully about the music itself, the orchestra, the different orchestra families, and the animals Saint-Saens' used to represent them and her lively commentary continues about the pieces as the book proceeds.
Summer provides time to inspire music lovers with stories about their favorite musicians. There are, for example, two new children's books about Bach.
Jeanette Winter's Sebastian: A Book About Bach (HBJ, $16.00; ages 5-8) is a small book of few words, but a large amount of prosaically-delivered information. The book begins by describing Bach's musical lineage, family, and then, his parents death when the boy felt "the music stopped." Winter recounts Bach's life with his brother, early musical passions that drove him to better understand music, and his talents in a composing style where "each instrument had its own voice. And when all the voices sounded at the same time, it was like good friends talking" . Winters mentions other interesting facets of his life including his twenty children, a jail stint, and how he was still composing one last piece" as his heart took its final beats."
Sallie Ketcham's Bach's Big Adventure (Orchard, $16.95; ages 5-10) is another lyrical voicing, this time of a specific event and a story Bach was fond of telling. Young Bach is angered by his brother's decree that it's not he who is the greatest, but Old Adam Reincken of Hamburg. Then comes the drivenness Bach is famous for as he skips school, walks miles to find the master, and finally creeps into St. Catherine's Church to see Reincken's "gnarled fingers race over the keys...sending music ringing through the vault of the church...over the heads of tired townspeople who had gathered outside." Reincken hears Bach's sobs in response to the music, and together they play "until the sun sank over St. Catherine's steeple in a great wheel of fire" and the old master proclaims "I thought the art had died, but now I see it lives in you."
Young adults will enjoy a biography by Susanna Reich, the daughter of a scholar and musicologist who did extensive research on Clara Schumann. Inspired by her mother and the musician, Susanna Reich has written a young adult biography, Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso (Clarion, $18.00; ages interested ten and up). Young adults will be astounded by how this young nineteenth century woman surmounted personal and societal struggles to become one of the best known musicians of her century. Amazingly, she was seen as an equal to male composers and musicians in a time that discounted women. Clara grew up with a manipulative, controlling, abusive father. Then she married Robert Schumann who loved her, but had such grave difficulties with her talents that he spent the last two years of his life in an institution, leaving Clara as sole support of their eight children. Despite all these odds, Clara Schuman is remembered as an extraordinary pianist, a composer, a teacher and the editor of her husband's collected works.
It's seems almost impossible to describe what music does to your insides, but I've discovered two incredible books that do just that.
For younger children, there's David McPhail's Mole Music (Holt, $15.95; ages 4-8). Mole works hard all day and then relaxes with television. "Mole liked his life, but lately he had begun to feel there was something missing." One night he sees a man on the television playing violin. Touched by the beautiful music, he sends away for one of his own. Now begins a lovely irony in the book. McPhail's words tell us how Mole works hard and his music improves, but he feels he never reaches the bigger world. McPhail's illustrations show us something different. We see how a small sapling, influenced by his sweet strains grows into a gigantic tree that shades people above ground who stop, listen, and delight at his music. As Mole wishes that his music could "reach into people's hearts and melt away their anger and sadness..and even change the world", pictures show warring troops that drop arms, and are lulled into the same "beautiful, peaceful dreams" Mole has. The book is simply written so it can be appreciated by young children, but it's one of those wonderful gems that touches all artists who wonder if their efforts ever reach people around them. The symbology of Mole operating underground seems to make this parallel even stronger.
Clara, the heroine of Barbara Snow Gilbert's Broken Chords (Front Street, $15.95; ages 11 and up) has been passionate about music all her life. She's the child of two musical parents, has grown musically under the tutelage of a Russian-born piano teacher and has a gift that has prepared her to be a finalist in a prestigious scholarship competition. Her secure world begins to shake as she falls in love with dance and injures herself. Hiding her injury and growing affections for a competitor, Clara's lost in confusion where the music she's been passionate about her entire life, feels limiting. As Clara, competes in searing physical pain, her inner pain is worse. And when she wins, comes an even more difficult decision. The book is divided into movements, rather than parts, and this is representative of the musical themes that direct the book. The author clearly knows music, young adults, and beautifully portrays a questioning young woman who's caught having to choose a life that seems off the path she's been following since youth.