By Robert Levine
A browse-anywhere guide that walks a child through the whole orchestra, section by section, and the composers who wrote for it.
This is the book for the child who's ready to go past 'that's a violin' and actually understand how an orchestra works. The first half tells the story of classical music through its composers, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and the rest, in short, friendly chunks with the wild-and-woolly biographical details children love. The second half is a tour of the instruments themselves, grouped by family, strings and brass and woodwinds and percussion, explaining what each one does and how they blend. Meredith Hamilton's cartoon-style illustrations keep it light. The original edition came with a CD of musical examples keyed to the pages, so a child could hear each instrument as they read about it.
Your child's moved past picture books and wants the real workings of music, and this hands over both halves of the puzzle, the instruments and the people who wrote for them, without being dry about it. It's built for dipping into, so an obsessed child can chase whatever they're wondering about that week, and the composer stories give the music faces and lives. It's the natural step up for a child who's outgrown a rhyming instrument book but isn't ready for a dense adult music history.