(1) 4-6 Illustrated by Charly Palmer. In a reverent celebration of African American music, Alexander's lyrical free-verse text flows through different eras and genres of sound. This musical tour begins in Africa: "Listen to the fireside chorus / of the motherland / to the talking drums / dancing beneath the golden sun / that beat a bold tapestry / of yesterday's stories / and tomorrow's dreams." From there, the exploration honors the hymns and hopes of enslaved people, gospel music ("Listen to the Amazing Grace / of the Jubilee Singers / to the joyful noise / of Sunday morning gospel / and Let the Church Say /Amen. Amen. HALLELUJAH!"), the blues, jazz, soul, rock and roll, hip-hop, and rap. Palmer's vibrant double-page acrylic paintings burst with color and movement, making a rewarding connection to the music; the full-bleed images are rich with resonance and meaning. Extensive end notes provide helpful information about the musical history, artists and movements, and cultural connections alluded to in both the text and the illustrations. A stunning homage to "the soundtrack of America / a symphony / of refuge and redemption."

Reviewer: Pauletta Brown Bracy | Horn Book Magazine Issue: March, 2025

(3) K-3 Illustrated by André Ceolin. In Rio de Janeiro's Mangueira favela, a renowned samba school is the community's heartbeat. Young Ailton Nunes, a precociously gifted drummer, helps the adult bateria win the 1990 Carnaval competition. After teaching samba abroad, he returns to end Mangueira’s twenty-year losing streak. This biography highlights samba’s power to teach life skills, build community, and transform lives. Clean, uncluttered digital illustrations allow the human story to shine. Back matter offers insights on Nunes, samba, and Portuguese words used in the text.

Reviewer: Summer Edward

(2) K-3 Illustrated by James Ransome. Perhaps no instrument is more associated with jazz than the saxophone. And no city more tied to both than New Orleans. But the history of the saxophone (originally saxophon), engagingly told here, begins across the Atlantic in the small Belgian town of Dinant, where the musician and inventor Adolphe Sax (1814-1894) was born into an instrument-making family. Sax's life provides the frame for the early parts of the story as he travels to France to bolster the instrument's popularity. After catching on in military bands across Europe, the saxophone traveled with the French army to Mexico and eventually made its way to New Orleans just in time for the dawn of the invention of jazz. Ransome's illustrations shine with careful detail, effortlessly cuing readers into changes in time and locale. One particularly memorable spread shows a black cat and three long, ominous human shadows containing text describing Sax's death with the wordless page opposite featuring a young Black child playing the saxophone--and one can almost hear the funeral dirge coming out of its bell.

Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2023

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Luisa Uribe. Cateura, Paraguay: a town built on a landfill. Families survive by working as gancheros digging through mountains of trash in hopes of finding recyclable cardboard, plastic, and metal to resell. From this town, with the help in 2006 of Favio Chávez, an environmental engineer who was also a musician, comes a children's orchestra using instruments made from the trash their homes are built upon: "oven trays, old drain pipes, door keys, metal forks and spoons, X-ray films, bottle caps, glue canisters, plastic buttons, paint canns." While Oliver's text centers Chávez (an outsider who is set up as a bit of a savior in the narrative), the artwork effectively positions the children of Cateura as the emotional focus of the story. Uribe's digital art is warm and inviting; ­ever-present sunshine seems to flood the outdoor setting, highlighting the musicians and their remarkable instruments. "'The world sends us garbage,' Favio says. 'We send back music.'" An inspiring picture book that demonstrates how environmentalism and the arts can unite to bring joy to an entire community. Back matter includes further details about Chávez and the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura as well as a bibliography that helpfully includes links to videos where readers can see and hear the orchestra perform.

Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2022

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Madison Safer. One person collects clay from the earth and shapes it into an ocarina; another finds metal ore deep in the ground and fashions it into a bell. In this richly illustrated and engaging exploration of the origins of musical instruments, each section focuses on a specific material, such as rocks, clay, gourds, silk, strings, or even human voices. Pimentel discusses how the material produces sound (i.e., the science of sound), lists instruments made from the material, and describes how they're played and used in different cultures and ceremonies. Safer's inviting watercolor, gouache, and colored-pencil illustrations reflect the text's emphasis on the connection between music and the human spirit. Occasional sidebars profile people who have changed the musical world through activism, creativity, and scientific discovery. The back matter includes selected sources, an explanatory note on organology and music classification systems, and ideas for making instruments at home.

Reviewer: Grace McKinney | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2022

(2) PS Illustrated by Will Moses. Folk artist Moses (Grandma's great-grandson) uses the first two and a half verses of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" as the text for his depiction of the ­Nativity story. The homespun quality of the oil paintings serves the tale well, with the manger a warm and comfortably crowded birthplace for the Baby Jesus. Although the carol gets a little abstract from the third verse on (all four verses are appended, along with a ­simple choral arrangement), Moses ­follows the Holy Family on their ­successful journey out of Bethlehem, the star still shining above.

Reviewer: Roger Sutton | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2021

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Dušan Petričić. Under the direction of a human conductor, a menagerie demonstrates seven musical terms such as allegro and dolce. Each term is introduced on a mostly white double-page spread featuring just the word and the (white, male) conductor gesturing appropriately. The following spread is composed (ha!) of minimal text ("Gently gliding, / slipping, sliding" for glissando) and a selection of animals (penguins, an alligator, otters, snakes, and more) wearing little bow ties and energetically displaying corresponding movement. Together, Heidbreder's euphonious text and Petričić's dynamic illustrations offer bravura performances on every page. A pronunciation guide/glossary is included at book's end.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Elisa Paganelli. With musical support of Rachel Leach. In association with the London Symphony Orchestra. Conductor Simon (the LSO's musical director, Sir Simon Rattle, who provides a foreword) needs to assemble an orchestra. As he auditions musicians, readers are introduced to the orchestra's different instrumental sections and the role each plays as part of the whole. An online component provides forty-three musical tracks aligned with the text for a more immersive experience--including the two pieces performed by Simon's orchestra on opening night. The lively illustrations support the upbeat text. Notes about each track, a glossary, and an index are appended.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn

(3) PS Illustrated by Lee White. "Our lives begin, middle, / and end on... / This pretty planet / spinning through space." Okay, so the lyrics work best sung to the melody, but they offer inspiration for some really magical illustrations. The fanciful detail-rich pictures, on full-bleed single pages, double-page spreads, and panels, celebrate the song's message to care for our planet. A white rabbit and two children travel Bedknobs and Broomsticks-style through time and space, marveling at fantastic scenes until they arrive at our polluted present. They get to work, clean up the mess, and sail their balloon-powered bed back home. Sheet music for two versions of the song--one in 6/4 time and a round in 4/4 time--is included.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn

(2) K-3 Illustrated by E. B. Lewis. Little is known about the childhood and early life of Willie Johnson, the legendary bluesman known as Blind Willie whose recording of his song "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" was included on the Golden Record on NASA's 1977 Voyager 1 space probe. Lewis's watercolors provide the perfect complement to Golio's spare second-person prose: "In a dark, quiet room, your voice poured into a microphone, slid down some wires, and scratched itself into a wax disc." The contrast between the bright yellows of Johnson's Texas birthplace and the star-filled vistas of deep space parallel Johnson's loss of vision as a young boy. In a series of double-page spreads, Golio and Lewis trace the path of Johnson's musical career: his first cigar box guitar, singing in church, learning to play slide with the edge of his pocket knife--all leading to the day Johnson lays down his first recordings. Back matter reveals the challenges of writing a biography of someone about whose early life little is known, and also gives more detailed information about NASA's Golden Record and the Voyager 1 space probe.

Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2020

(2) 4-6 Illustrated by Elizabeth Catlett. This welcome new edition of a 1993 picture-book version of the song known as the African American national anthem is illustrated with the Harlem Renaissance artist's strong, stark, and striking black-and-white linocuts. As the original Horn Book Magazine review wrote: "the portraits and the lyrics tell a powerful story of struggle and triumph and hope." The musical score and a (poetic) new foreword by Ashley Bryan are included.

Reviewer: Martha V. Parravano | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2018

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Frank Morrison. This look at the pioneers of rap music begins with canonical African American poets and ends with the women who rapped first: "Female MCs break it down: Salt-N-Pepa and TLC. / Queen Latifah sports a crown, reigning like royalty." The rhymes suffer a bit without a backing track, but the art, spiked with graffiti motifs, hits all the right notes. Glos.

Reviewer: Nell Beram

(3) PS Music arranged by Cheryl Eissing. Children will enjoy the sly humor and the chantable repetition of this twist on the classic cumulative folk song, "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea." In Long's bold, full-spread illustrations in deep, mossy greens, a turtle and a little snail provide additional visual comedy. Sing-aloud musical notation and lyrics are appended.

Reviewer: Cyrisse Jaffee

(3) PS Illustrated by Rafael López. López has adapted the well-known spiritual to invoke a humanistic theme: "We've got everybody everywhere in our hands." His exuberant mixed-media illustrations include digital elements and convey the happiness of a diverse set of international children and animals frolicking in all kinds of environments. Musical notation appears at book's end. Also available in a bilingual English/Spanish edition.

Reviewer: Melinda Greenblatt

(3) 4-6 Made by Hand series. To show the history of the steel drum (also called a pan), Lakin navigates histories of colonialism and slavery in Trinidad, not avoiding darker realities despite the book's focus on the instrument. Readers then "meet" a contemporary drum craftsman and entrepreneur and are walked through his process. The subject is made accessible through clear text, large photographs, and stylish design elements. Includes instrument-making projects. Reading list, timeline. Glos.

Reviewer: Dorrie Karlin

(3) 4-6 Alternator Books: Digital Makers series. Part of a high-interest series about digital media, this introduction to song recording encourages anyone interested, regardless of prior skills. The broad explanation describes some challenging recording and sharing techniques, but the oft-mentioned YouTube offers easier access; profiles of real-life stars should encourage aspiring musicians. Cheerful, patterned graphics and bright photographs complement the appealing subject matter. Reading list, websites. Glos., ind.

Reviewer: Dorrie Karlin

(3) PS Illustrated by Ashley Barron. New lyrics, set to familiar tunes (such as "B-I-N-G-O" and "Happy Birthday"), urge young children to be kind, manage their anger, accept mistakes, etc. Bright collage illustrations mirror the messages, showing expressive kids from many cultures and with varying abilities. Back matter provides rationale for caregivers and storytime tips. Sheet music and sound files can be downloaded for free.

Reviewer: Gail Hedges

(4) K-3 Illustrated by Donald Saaf. Music Notation by Claudia Eliaza and Billy Buss. This collection of sixty-four songs--including traditional shanties, hymns, folk songs, and original tunes by Zane--targets music-savvy educators and caregivers. The songs, from many cultures and languages, shine amid Zane's lengthy, sentimental notes about song origins, musicians, and instruments. The childlike folk art features children with a diversity of skin tones. Musical notation includes chords and melody line; guitar and ukulele chord charts also provided. Ind.

Reviewer: Amy Seto Forrester

(3) YA Hip-Hop Insider series. These standalone series titles, ideal for student research, place facets of hip-hop culture in historical, political, and cultural context. The clean layouts employ a large font, wide margins, plentiful color photos, and informative sidebars. The series celebrates hip-hop as the voice of urban and marginalized populations while also objectively addressing concerns including commercialization and explicit lyrics. Reading list, timeline. Bib., glos., ind. Review covers these Hip-Hop Insider titles: Hip-Hop Culture, The Men of Hip-Hop, The Women of Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop Music, and Hip-Hop Groups.

Reviewer: Amy Seto Forrester

(3) YA Hip-Hop Insider series. These standalone series titles, ideal for student research, place facets of hip-hop culture in historical, political, and cultural context. The clean layouts employ a large font, wide margins, plentiful color photos, and informative sidebars. The series celebrates hip-hop as the voice of urban and marginalized populations while also objectively addressing concerns including commercialization and explicit lyrics. Reading list, timeline. Bib., glos., ind. Review covers these Hip-Hop Insider titles: Hip-Hop Culture, The Men of Hip-Hop, The Women of Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop Music, and Hip-Hop Groups.

Reviewer: Amy Seto Forrester