These are recommended Non-Fiction books for the 2015 Summer Fun at the Library Program: Read to the Rhythm.
A downloadable & printable list of all Summer Fun recommended books for kids is available here.
Ah, music!
(K – Grade 3) 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.
The Bremen town musicians
(PreK – Grade 3) While on their way to Bremen to become musicians, four aging animals who are no longer of any use to their masters find a new home after outwitting a gang of robbers.
Children's Book of Music
Grades 3-6: Introduces children to music history, profiling the musical instruments, styles, and traditions of cultures around the world.
Dance
(Grades 3-7) Discusses everything readers need to know about the dance world, from the history of the tango to breakin'.
Handel, who knew what he liked
(Grades 3-6) In this biography, the man who would later compose some of the world's most beautiful music is shown to have once been a stubborn little boy with a mind of his own.
Hip hop speaks to children : a celebration of poetry with a beat
(Grades 2-5) Includes 51 selections from 42 poets and performers, ranging from Langston Hughes and Eloise Greenfield, to Kanye West and Queen Latifah.
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix
(Grades 3-6) Before he became one of the greatest guitar players of all time, Jimi Hendrix was a boy who loved to paint and listen to records, and who asked himself an unusual question: could someone paint pictures with sound?
Leontyne Price : voice of a century
(K – Grade 3) Perseverance and an unmatchable voice propel Mississippi's Leontyne Price from a poor black girl to an opera singer the world will not soon forget.
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone
(Grades 1-4) A biography of African American jazz virtuoso Melba Doretta Liston, a pioneering twentieth-century trombone player, composer, and music arranger at a time when few women, of any race, played brass instruments and were part of the jazz scene.
Mister and Lady Day : Billie Holiday and the dog who loved her
(K – Grade 4) Billie Holiday-also known as Lady Day-had fame, style, a stellar voice, big gardenias in her hair, and lots of dogs, but her favorite was a boxer named Mister. Mister was always there to bolster her courage through good times and bad, even before her legendary appearance at New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein
(Grades 5-8) Beginning with Lenny's childhood in Boston and ending with his triumphant conducting debut at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic when he was just twenty-five, readers are drawn into the energetic, passionate, challenging music-filled life of young Leonard Bernstein.
The noisy paint box : the colors and sounds of Kandinsky's abstract art
(Grades 1-4) Describes how Kandinsky’s creative life was profoundly shaped by a neurological condition called synesthesia which caused him to experienced colors as sounds and sounds as colors.
Rabbit's snow dance : a traditional Iroquois story
(PreK – Grade 2) A new take on an old fable finds Rabbit obsessed with doing a dance that makes it snow by the bucketload. What happens if Rabbit doesn't know when to stop dancing?
Rubber-band banjos and a java jive bass : projects and activities on the science of music and sound
(Grades 4-7) Presents the science of sound and music, including how sound is made, how the ear hears sounds, and how different musical instruments are made.
Swing sisters : the story of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm
(Grades 1-3) The Piney Woods Country Life School’s all-girl swing band attempts to make it to the big-time in an era when integrated musical groups were practically unheard of. It wasn't always easy, and it wasn't always safe, but the talented Sweethearts of Rhythm ultimately became an international sensation.
The twelve dancing princesses
(PreK – Grade 3) A retelling, set in Africa, of the story of twelve princesses who dance secretly all night long and how their secret is eventually discovered.
When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop
Grades 1 - 4: From his childhood in Jamaica to his youth in the Bronx, Laban Carrick Hill's book tells how Kool Herc came to be a DJ, how kids in gangs stopped fighting in order to breakdance, and how the music he invented went on to define a culture and transform the world.
¡Ole! flamenco
(Grades 3-5) Photo-essay about Flamenco, a southern Spanish art form that incorporates song, dance, and music, tracing its cultural history and focusing on a contemporary young girl and her brother as they learn the traditional style of movement and instrument playing.