Ah, Music!

Music is rhythm.

Music is melody.

Music is feeling ...
and oh, so much more.

Ah, music! is about composers and instruments. It's about artists and performers. It's about history -- from the earliest music through classical, modern, jazz, and popular times. It's about diversity and pleasure.

Beloved author and illustrator Aliki shares her keen insight and understanding of music and all its themes and variations.

Customer Reviews:

Refreshing Music Mini-encyclopedia

By E. S. Will "a new leaf" - April 12, 2004

Aliki provides a broad synopsis of music-its place in history, cultures and the human heart-in this inspirational, informative volume. Each page consists of a collage of images united by a concise narrative.
What is especially refreshing about this mini-encyclopedia of music is that Aliki "bookends" the mechanics and "hardware"- types of instruments, who's who of Western composers, time lines of jazz and pop music - with "software," placing music's emotional and social value into perspective for the child. She shows how music is the background of everyday life, for example, with this definition, "Rhythm is a marching-band beat, a puffing-train beat, a beating-the eggs beat, a heart beat."
The book closes with a panoply of pictures demonstrating how music comforts and inspires, by helping people to relax, calm anger, cheer low spirits, and create or perform work.

Teaching aid.

By Soprano01 - February 22, 2006

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.

In small doses ...

By MovedbyMusic - May 2, 2005

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.