Playing in Harmony: Clarinet and Trumpet by Melanie Ellsberg

CLARINET AND TRUMPET WERE FRIENDS FROM THE FIRST NOTE.

"TRUMPET, YOU'RE A BLAST!"

"CLARINET, YOU'RE SHARP!"

The two made good music together--until a newcomer marched into the band room.

Suddenly Clarinet realized that she and Oboe had a lot in commen--silvery keys and a reed! Perhaps they should have their own section in the band and hang out together. Trumpet didn't belong with his friend any more, especially when Clarinet squeeked at the fanfare he wrote for her. Trumpet couldn't help but B flat! He started to play with Trombone. French horn tried to hit the right chord by joining with section. Then the Woodwinds invited Flute to play with them!

THAT EVENED THE SCORE!

There was no harmony in the band room until a new guy came swinging in.

It was SAXOPHONE!

He had a reed, but he was brass--a happy hybrid who smoothed the discord and jazzed up the band's sound right away!

"DIG IT!" CROONED SAX.

The percussion instruments, who had been afraid of striking the wrong beat, came out to join in, and all the band was harmoniously and melodiously in tune, in author Melanie Ellsberg's funny and punny, off-beat introduction to the instruments in the band, Clarinet and Trumpet (book with shaker) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020), a picture-book parable with plenty of wordplay with musical terms and a pitch for cooperation in music and life. With the comic illustrations of artist John Herzog to lighten the mood, this small book offers both social and musical learning for young readers with the just the right rhythm for young readers. An added attraction is the built-in shaker in the book to help young readers join the band. Says School Library Journal, "A lyrical tour de force about individuality, friendship, and community...."

Christmas Cover-up: Gingerbread Christmas by Jan Brett

EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE IS TALKING ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL.

MATTI TOLD THE GINGERBREAD BABY.

"I CAN SING IN MY GINGERBREAD BAND!" THE GINGERBREAD BABY SANG OUT.

Matti points out that his Gingerbread Baby doesn't exactly have a band. But that's no hindrance for these two master bakers, who quickly mix up a batch of ginger cookie dough and shape them into band instruments, who bounce right out of the oven and begin to warm up as soon as Matti adds the detail of strings and keys with decorative frosting.

Matti hitches up his cheerful hen to the sleigh and the band rehearses all the way to the little Alpine village, where the festivities are already in progress. Gingerbread Baby and his gingery musical mates take the stage and start their spicy serenade. The townspeople begin to dance to the sweet waltz music. But then one sharp-eyed girl in the audience steps up close and peers at the jolly musicians.

"I THINK THESE INSTRUMENTS ARE REALLY COOKIES!" SAID ANN-SOPHIE.

"I SO WANT ONE!"

Oops! Gingerbread Baby and Matti had planned on providing music for the festival, not refreshments!

Thinking quickly the Gingerbread Baby does what he does best--he leads the villagers in a chase around the village Christmas tree, as he sings....

"Silver stars twinkle in the night. Silver trees and snow delight!

Hand in hand we twinkle around. Twinkle in the magic sound."

Unnoticed, the gingery instruments slip behind the stage, where Matti quickly scoops of handfuls of snow and converts the cookie instruments into covert jolly snowmen, and loading them on his sleigh and giving his draft chicken a quiet Giddyup, the clandestine musical snowmen disappear from sight into the night.

That was a close one, Matti thinks, as he makes for home with his camouflaged and intact cookie crew,

And meanwhile the Gingerbread Baby himself cleverly takes cover in plain sight amid the Christmasy decorations on the giant village tree, in author-illustrator Jan Brett's third Gingerbread Baby story, Gingerbread Christmas (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2016). Brett saves an even bigger treat than cookies for her fans, with a enormous two-page pop-up Christmas tree, filled with bright decorations and one Gingerbread boy, bravely trying to blend in.

It's another jolly and bright Christmas story, illustrated in her signature style with plenty of red and green and predictive side panels and frames which forecast what happens next for sharp-eyed readers, in yet another illustratively attractive classic Christmas tale for the best-selling Brett. Other popular Christmas tales by Jan Brett include The Wild Christmas Reindeer, The Night Before Christmas by Jan Brett, (2011-11-01), The Three Snow Bears, and Who's That Knocking on Christmas Eve?

Boom Boom Boom! Christmas Parade by Sandra Boynton

BOOM biddy BOOM biddy BOOM BOOM BOOM!

WHAT'S THAT SOUND THAT FILLS THE ROOM?

We're in luck! It's a Christmas parade!  A little pig hurries to peer out the window and see the players go by with their instruments.

Marching at the head of the formation is Elephant on the bass drum, followed by chickens on bassoons, hippos on snares, ratta-tat-tatting. Next come two cows on saxophones and three mice on piccolos, tootling away, Sliding their slides over the heads of the mice are ducks on trombones. A Santa Claus Rhino rides royally by on his own special float, followed by none other than a bird blurping loud tuba notes.

And then, just as quickly as it came, the Christmas Parade is over! The little pig is  sad. Now what does he have to look forward to?

The red-and-while stocking just waiting to be hung on his bedpost should give him a clue about what to do on Christmas Eve, in the bright-new board book edition of her classic, Christmas Parade (Simon, 2012), complete with jolly hippo drummers marching by on the endpapers and filled with that irresistibly charming  Boynton rhymes and illustrations for the holiday season.

Whatja Do Widja Didgeridoo? Do You Do a Didgeridoo? by Nick Page

"Hello, Mr. Music Man.
How do you do?
Do you do a didgeridoo?
One that blows a loud wa-hoo?
So do you do a didgeridoo?"

"No. We didgeri-don't!"

The music store has plenty of instruments--recorders, banjos, guitars, French horns, even kazoos out their wa-zoos-- but apparently is out of the elusive didgeridoo. But the jaunty customer doesn't give up. Perhaps if he describes what he wants a bit better, the proprietor will come through with a didgeridoo. So he pleads again...

"Do you do a didgeridoo?
One that blows a loud wa-hoo?
I could imitate bird songs for you.
I could make a squawk like a cockatoo!
Or imitate a pigeon's coo.
Or the plaintive sound of a lone curlew.
Or sound like a owl--tu-whit tu-whoo!
Or the angry grunt of an old emu
As it mourns the fact that it never flew!
But tell me, please; oh, tell me true?
Do you do a didgeridoo?"

"No! We didgeri-don't!"

How many words that rhyme with "didgeridoo" CAN author Nick Page come up with in his Do You Do a Didgeridoo? (Make Believe Ideas, 2008). Well, how about shrew, gnu, tiramisu, igloo, sagaloo, or hullabaloo--to mention a few? His would-be customer reels off quite a few on the trail of the elusive didgeridoo until--wonder of wonders, Mr. Music Store Man recalls that he just MIGHT have one somewhere. And when he pulls it forth from under the counter, he outdoes his customer and Dr. Seuss' and Sam-I-Am:

"YES! WE DO A DIDGERIDOO!
You can paint it purple or yellow or blue.
You can play a duet with the kangaroo Sue.
You can play it while paddling your canoe.
You can play it in Peru or Timbuktu.
You can play it instead of your old kazoo.
You can play it by the side of your barbeque.
With a shrew, the gnu, and the caribou.
And listen! It blows a loud wa-hoo!"

Jaunty rhymes, lively illustrations, a listen-along CD, and a surprise ending make Do You Do a Didgeridoo? a fun way to learn about this esoteric Australian musical instrument and exercise the rhyming funny-bone anew.

De-Composing: The Composer Is Dead by Lemony Snicket

Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, says that the impetus for his new book, The Composer Is Dead (Book & CD) was the desire to supersede the standard Peter and the Wolf as the favorite medium for educating elementary music students about the instruments of the orchestra.

Back in the day, my elementary class didn't even get to see Peter and the Wolf. Instead, we sat through several run-throughs of a low-fi recording of "Rusty in Orchestraville," a not-very-scintillating drama through which we (well, some of us, anyway) learned the sounds of each section in the musical aggregation. This album came in two parts--a record with the story of poor Rusty, working his way through the strings, woodwinds, percussion, and brass, apparently in an effort to escape from Orchestraville, I presume, and, the most exciting part, a second record, with narrow grooved tracks featuring each orchestral instrument for us to prove our ability to identify each by its distinctive sound. This latter teaching material was made gleefully suspenseful by our teacher's attempts to drop the needle on the right track while it whizzed around on the turntable at a dizzying 78 rpm. But I digress.

Only Lemony Snicket, creator of the notorious A Series of Unfortunate Events books, would stoop to opening his music education thriller by pulling out that old, er, musical saw (What do composers do when they die? Decompose.) and turning it into a premise for a study of the modern orchestra. But then, only Mr. Snicket would have the, er, brass to try to pull that one off.

The composer is dead.

"Composer is a word which here means "a person who sits in a room muttering and humming and figuring out what note the orchestra is going to play."

This is called composing. But last night the composer was not muttering. He was not humming. He was not moving. Or even breathing.

This is called decomposing.

To investigate the suspicious death of the composer, the mustachioed Inspector appears to interrogate the last group to see the deceased alive--the orchestra. Systematically, he questions each section about what they know and where they were in the fateful hours surrounding the death. He begins with the strings, particularly those divas of the orchestra, the violins, "the first violins, who have the trickier parts to play, and the second violins, who are more fun at parties."

"We were performing a waltz, which kept us busy all night."

"AHA!" said the Inspector. "Perhaps you murdered the composer for making you play so much!"

"Don't be ridiculous!" the violins said. "Violins are the stars of the orchestra. If we killed the Composer, we would have to find work at square dances or in romantic restaurants!"

The Inspector questions the cellos and basses and then, just as he turns away, remembers something.

"Oh!--the violas! What about you?"

"Everyone forgets about us," said the violas bitterly. "We play the notes and the chords no one cares about. We play crucial counter melodies that no one hears. We have to stay late after performances and stack up all the chairs."

In fact, it seems every instrument in the orchestra has some weak alibi or outstanding grievance against the Composer that make each one a suspect. But then, an even more likely culprit presents himself to the Inspector:

"Of course!" the Inspector said. "The conductor!! You have been murdering composers for years. In fact, wherever there is a conductor, you're sure to find a dead composer!

Beethoven....... dead!

J. C. Bach....... dead!

C. P. E. Bach...... dead!

J. S. Bach...... dead!

Offenbach...... dead!

Schubert......Unfinished, but dead!"

But as Snicket finally deduces, orchestras and conductors murder composers all the time. More importantly, however, they also keep them alive for generations to enjoy, and that's the theme of this little musical morality play. Together Lemony Snicket and Nathaniel Stookey capture the characteristic sounds of each instrument and make them memorable for the student--and, unlike "Rusty in Orchestraville," all without requiring any riveting feats of hand-to-eye coordination from the music teacher.

Included with the book is a CD of Snicket's impassioned reading of The Composer Is Dead (Book & CD), performing his text to Nathaniel Stookey's original score played by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra--including the violas, should you have the trained ear to hear them.* A visual peek at this black tie event can be seen here.

This book and CD combination is destined to become a staple of elementary music education, allowing Rusty (one hopes) finally to Rust In Peace.


*And thanks to Rusty and that fearless teacher so long ago, I can!