Anna Harwell Celenza

Very creepy and not creepy enough at the same time, which may mean this book has struck a balance between the factual story of composer Camille Saint-Saëns and the fantastically ghoulish story his music tells. If you were going to visit the Paris catacombs, I'd definitely recommend giving this a read and a listen (the books comes with a CD recording of the Danse Macabre).

One part that struck me as interesting was the use of metaphor when describing the first performance of the piece. The text and the pictures both make it seems like something magical happened during the performance. "One by one the skeletons rose from their graves. Bone against bone, they rattled and danced." The illustrations only show the orchestra as a background image. In the foreground, we see a skeleton holding a fiddle. This part of the book describes the story the music tells, but an inexperienced reader could think the book just veered into fiction. I think this creates a good teachable moment about the use of metaphor in non-fiction. Common Core, baby!

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Johann Gottlieb Goldberg is a talented musician but is stunted by the fact that he is an orphan. When Johann Sebastian Bach encourages Count Keyserlingk to take him in, Goldberg gets an opportunity to work on his music. After the Count stumbles upon him playing one night, he challenges him each week until finally he asks for a piece that has everything. Not knowing what that entails, Goldberg goes to Bach for help and Bach's Goldberg Variations are born. I thought this book was interesting and provided insight to a lesser known story. The illustrations are reminiscent of Tomie Depaola's work which makes it a whimsical read.… (más)

Celenza tells the story of Duke Ellington's process during the recording of The Nutcracker Suite. The story is completely based on facts: every character is real, the interactions are real, and the recording does exist. However, Celenza relied on her imagination to fill in the gaps of information due to a lack of a detailed description of the recording session. The book is written much like a nonfiction book, but some of the conversations are made up. This is a very cute and funny book, there are many times throughout the book where silly language was used such as "The hippest cats of jazz-a-tooty." I loved the art style of the illustrations, which served as a good visual aid for cultural icons. The book reads well, and is very entertaining. However, for me personally, I just wasn't as interested in the story itself than I'd anticipated. I'm sure to anyone who has a deep love for jazz and ballet, they would love this book.… (más)