Nonfiction Monday: Mozart, The Wonder Child

Mozart is a perfect candidate for a picture book biography, and Diane Stanley's Mozart:  The Wonder Child, A Puppet Play in Three Acts (HarperCollins, 2009) is, in my view, a perfect example of one: informative and engaging text, well-chosen detail, lots of back matter, and--this is important--beautiful design.

Stanley, who has written and illustrated eleven other picture book biographies, is past master at this art.  She was inspired to present Mozart's life as a puppet play by the Salzburg Marionette Theatre (thus the strings).  I'm not convinced that this is a puppet play, although I like the three-act structure of the text; the art (minus the strings) is, however, exquisite, and of course everyone is lavishly dressed.  I particularly like the handwritten musical staffs that correspond to what Mozart is composing on a given page; and the way the footnotes, which are designated by quarter and eighth notes, are presented on scrolls by little cherubs.

With younger children, read Play, Mozart, Play (a play on words) by Peter Sis (Greenwillow, 2006).  For older children, pair this with Mozart: The Boy Who Changed the World With His Music (with reproductions of portraits and other paintings, and photos of places) by Marcus Weeks (National Geographic, 2007).

Most important, listen--or play!--some of Mozart's music.  After reading this together, Leo asked if he could learn to play something by Mozart on his violin, and was surprised to learn that Mozart had composed (variations on) his very first piece:  Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.  Maybe you know it?

Menotti's The Unicorn and two other creatures

The kids and I saw the Bowen McCauley Dance performance of Gian Carlo Menotti's "The Unicorn, The Gorgon and the Manticore" this afternoon. Some of the dancers, notably the Mystery Man and the Unicorn, visited Milly's preschool a few weeks ago, and she insisted that we buy tickets to the performance. It was fantastic! I wasn't familiar with the libretto (the only Menotti I know is "Amahl and the Night Visitors"), but it's a fable about art and envy that, on at least some levels, children can understand. And they loved the animals.

Afterwards, Lucy Bowen McCauley, the artistic director, invited the children in the audience to come onstage, and she and the dancers taught them the characteristic movements of each animal and how they corresponded to the music. Nothing against the Gorgon and the Manticore, but the Unicorn was Milly's favorite. Highly recommended for young dancers.

[Aside: Milly is interested in unicorns, and I've been looking for books about them to share with her, with limited success. Can you recommend any unicorn books for younger readers and listeners? Team Unicorn people, I'm looking at you.]

Nonfiction Monday: Note by Note

If you took piano lessons as a child, or if you have a child who is taking them now, then you'll want to read Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson by Tricia Tunstall (Simon and Schuster, 2008).  I like Tunstall's description of music lessons:  "weekly session[s] alone together, physically proximate, concentrating on the transfer of a skill that is complicated and difficult, often frustrating and frequently tedious, but that every now and then open suddenly and without warning into joy" (3).  And the chapter on recitals is particularly, sometimes painfully, well-observed.

Recommended at Read Roger (see the comments for what readers remember from past piano lessons; Spinning Song, anyone?).  I only wish there were something comparable for violin lessons--that's what Leo takes.  Although Little Rat Makes Music by Monika Bang-Campbell (illustrated by Molly Bang; Harcourt, 2007) comes close, from a child's perspective.  So that's what elementary violin playing looks like!

A Year with Frog and Toad

The kids and I went to our community children's theater production of A Year with Frog and Toad this afternoon.  We adore the Frog and Toad series of early readers, written and illustrated by Arnold Lobel.  Before the show there was a lot of speculation about which of the Frog and Toad stories we would be seeing; I'm pleased to report that many of our favorites (Spring; The Letter; The Garden; Cookies; The Surprise) made it in.  The kids' favorite number was probably "Cookies," which came on just before the intermission.  Coincidentally, I had packed a snack of cookies (no milk) which we ate right afterward.  Thus fortified, we happily watched the second act of the show (in which Snail finally delivers the letter Frog sent to Toad in the first act).  We liked it!  Not as much as the books (of course), but enough to consider buying the soundtrack.

[Favorite Frog and Toad stories which did not make it into A Year With Frog and Toad:  A Lost Button and A List.  What are your favorites?]

Math and music (and picture books)

Leo and I went to the Kennedy Center on Sunday to see (and hear) an NSO Ensemble program for families called Connections:  MORE Math and Music (reviewed in the Washington Post today, 1/8/08).  The program was a good fit (maybe a little advanced) for Leo, who likes math and is just starting his second year of violin.

We also re-read two of our favorite picture books about music with Milly, who stayed home with her dad.  Surprise!  Both of them are also in some way about math, although I wouldn't have thought of either of them if asked to recommend a math-related picture book.

Caldecott Honor winner Zin! Zin! Zin! a Violin by Lloyd Moss, illustrated by Marjorie Priceman (Simon and Schuster, 1995) is also counting book:  it starts with a trombone playing alone (solo) and adds orchestral instruments one by one (duo, trio, etc.) until it has "a chamber group of ten."  Moss's well-written rhyming verses are perfectly attuned to the isntruments they introduce.  And Priceman's illustrations, done in gouache, contribute an energetic and colorful cast of musicians.

And in The Philharmonic Gets Dressed by Karla Kuskin, with illustrations by Marc Simont (HarperCollins, 1982), 105 members of the Philharmonic Orchestra (92 men and 13 women) get dressed for work.  Kuskin's quiet, precise text tells us how many take showers or baths (or bubblebaths); how many of the men stand up or sit down to get into their pants; etc.  I think Simont's spot illustrations of the various members of the orchestra are delightful, too.

Oh, and another thing these two books have in common:  great last lines.  But I can't quote them here, because you have to read the book first!

Poetry Friday: Good King Wenceslas

Good King Wenceslas; original carol by John M. Neale; illustrated by Tim Ladwig (Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, 2005).

"Good King Wenceslas look'd out

on the feast of Stephen,

when the snow lay round about,

deep and crisp and even."

Ladwig, working in watercolor, liquid acrylic, and oil on paper, beautifully illustrates Neale's carol about the tenth-century Bohemian king who goes out with his page to give alms to a peasant on St. Stephen's Day (the second day of Christmas, December 26).  I like Ladwig's framing device, a little boy looking at the statue of Wenceslas in Prague and "imagin[ing] a long time ago..."; the same little boy (and his dog) appears in the story as Wenceslas's page.  A "Historical Note" at the back of the book tells us that Neale wrote the carol in 1853 to inspire children to be generous on St. Stephen's Day: it's not too late!

See this article in Wikipedia for the full text of the carol and notes on its form (it was set to the melody of a thirteenth century Swedish spring song).  There is also another picture book about Wenceslas by Geraldine McCaughrean (whose work I very much like); illustrated by Christian Birmingham (Transworld, 2007); this one appears to be a prose retelling of the Wenceslas legend.

[Leo is finally interested in knights, kings, and castles, much to the delight of his medievalist mother (me); he especially liked Ladwig's warm illustrations of the castle interiors.]

Fox and geese

Leo is learning to play Song of the Wind on his 1/8 size violin.  I like this folk song, and not only because it's not Twinkle or one of its endless variations.  Leo likes it, too.  Then his teacher (Miss Sarah) suggested that he sing along as he plays.  We didn't know the words (they're not in the Suzuki Violin School book we're using), so she sang them to us:

• Fox you chased the goose last night
• You picked the fattest one (picked the fattest one)
• Now I'm going to hunt you down and get you with my gun, gun, gun
• Now I'm going to hunt you down and get you with my gun.

Leo, who as you'll come to know is a sensitive little guy, and I must have been visibly shocked, because Miss Sarah suggested we make up our own words.  This is what we came up with:

• Then it pecked you on the nose and made you want to run, run run
• Then it pecked you on the nose and made you want to run.

Much better.  Anyway, the episode reminded me of this book:  The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night: An Old Song Illustrated by Peter Spier (Random House, 1961; it won a Caldecott Honor).  I first read it, appropriately enough, on a chilly night in New England, at my in-laws' house in Bristol, RI.  I wasn't familiar with the song (recorded by Burl Ives in 1945), but I loved Spier's lighthearted pen-and-ink (and watercolor, on alternate double page spreads) illustrations: detailed, historically accurate, funny (see the expression on the face of the terrified goose).  This is what autumn should look like.

I haven't read it to the kids on any of our visits to RI, thinking that Leo, unlike the fox, might mind the "quack-quack-quack, and the legs all dangling down-o."  I just noticed that the goose (and the duck) join the fox family in a sing-along at the end of the book, though; maybe we'll gather around the piano ourselves and sing it together tomorrow.  After we eat our turkey, of course.  Happy Thanksgiving!  Gobble, gobble, gobble.

[The Fox was also recorded by Pete Seeger on his collection of animal folk songs Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Fishes (Smithsonian Folkways).  We love folk songs; I'll have to check this one out.]