About the Author

With more than 60 fiction and nonfiction titles for children to her credit, Aliki has been delighting her many fans since her first book was published in 1960. Born in New Jersey, she now lives in New York City.

Aliki's books for young readers include the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out titles Digging Up Dinosaurs, Fossils Tell of Long Ago, My Feet, and My Hands. Other nonfiction books by Aliki include How a Book Is Made, Mummies Made in Egypt, My Visit to the Aquarium, My Visit to the Dinosaurs, My Visit to the Zoo, Wild and Woolly Mammoths, and William Shakespeare & the Globe.

Reviews

Gr 1-4-Like a carefully composed song, this ode to music slowly unfolds-note by note, line by line, stanza by stanza. The first several pages are devoted to the definition of music itself. With headings like "Music is Rhythm" or "Music is Volume," these terms are explained in an easy, child-friendly manner. For pitch, a boy playing a piccolo says, "A piccolo is so high, I hear it way at the top of my head." Then music as a written creation is introduced with a brief description of notes, likening them to handwriting. Next, "the creation comes to life" through the instruments and orchestra that play it, the voices that sing it, and even the dancers who perform it. With each of these elements, a few lines of explanation are followed by Aliki's signature figures that do so much in such a small space. The history of music is broken down into many stages, from prehistoric to classical to modern, and many composers are introduced with a small portrait captioned by a single sentence. Here, the author sometimes uses words like "motet" or "oratorio" without definition and only gives the briefest of glimpses into centuries and countries. However, the book is meant to be an introduction and Aliki's love of her subject shines through. This enjoyable title is best shared one-on-one and its format makes it ideal for browsing. It should lead young music lovers back to the shelves to find out more about a type of music or composer who has piqued their curiosity.-Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Energetic art gives this ode to music a lively visual pace, but doesn't help Aliki (Feelings) reconcile her overtures to two disparate audiences. Covering everything from very basic terms (e.g., volume "is the loudness or softness of the sound") to a "mini history" of jazz ("The Blues: Earthy music formed of certain `blue-note' chords reflects the melancholy mood of the [1900 Mississippi Delta]"), the volume is ambitious to a fault, attempting to serve the very young as well as more advanced readers. Aliki is at her best in addressing novices, for whom she supplies frequently lyrical definitions: "Rhythm is a marching-band beat, a puffing-train beat, a beating-the-eggs beat, a heart beat." Abundant cartoons amplify these ideas in child-friendly examples (e.g., next to text announcing that "High, sharp pings can sound like piercing light" is an image of Peter Pan flying into a bedroom window, saying via dialogue balloon, "I hear you, Tinkerbell"). But the playful art does not augur a uniformly playful text. Venturing into history, the narrative strains. Occasionally, it falls into the tautological ("Christianity inspired church music") or the recherch (Stravinsky "startled the world with rhythmic neoclassical sounds"). The illustrations, too, can require prior knowledge; for instance, a small image of, presumably, Porgy and Bess appears over a blurb about George Gershwin that identifies him only as a composer-songwriter who "introduced the soul of America to Europe." The tone resumes its childlike simplicity in the final spreads ("We make music. Making music is hard fun"). Attractive but discordant. All ages. (Apr.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.