Ah, Music!

Ah, Music! is a charming, inspiring and smart picture books for people of all ages. It makes a strong case for the importance of music of all kinds in our lives. If my children were younger, I'd be reading this with them, but even as an older adult I found much to enjoy in this book. It's rapidly becoming a favorite gift for friends and relatives with children.

This is a great book for music teachers, or teachers that know some about music. It is easy to pick a page and teach a lesson on that subject. It is also a good classroom book that will inspire children to want to know more.

I am an elementary music teacher and found this book very helpful in my teaching. It gives general descriptions of what music is, tells about the different instruments, and gives a short history of music by music periods along with well known composers of each period.

I bought this book specifically because it was an easy read for children. I was teaching a unit on jazz to a group of fourth grade students and found the brief history of jazz extremely useful. It broke the history down by decade, and mentioned an important fact or two about the decade. Charactures of musicians and names are mentioned too to help students identify musicians in the time periods and styles. The book overall is a great book to assist in introducing children to music, but I used it specifically for this lesson.

This book is not a story - it's an atlas of information. Kids can use this as a reference book but there are so many other choices out there for bringing music the color and joy it deserves in a more sincere and descriptive way.