Here are 100 books that Esquivel! Space-Age Sound Artist fans have personally recommended if you like
Esquivel! Space-Age Sound Artist.
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Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I’m always fascinated by the transformative moment – how and when people decide to use their voices for change.
Nina Simone’s musical talent was recognized early, and she faced discrimination early, too. As the Civil Rights Movement grew, Simone at first focused on building her career. Her transformative moment was born of rage at the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evers and the Birmingham, Alabama, 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four young girls and severely injured another.
Protest songs poured out of her, and she became the fearless voice of the Civil Rights Movement. Powerful and inspirational!
2
authors picked
Nina
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
A BIG ISSUE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Longlisted for the UKLA Book Awards
This illuminating and defining biography from bestselling author Traci N. Todd, with illustrations from award-winner Christian Robinson, tells the story of Eunice Waymon, who grew up to become Nina Simone - and shares her bold, defiant, and exultant legacy with a new generation.
With passion and unparalleled skill, Traci N. Todd and Christian Robinson bring this iconic singer's story to young readers and their families. Meet young Eunice, who sang before she could talk, and journey with her from the piano stool she shared with her father…
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
This uplifting picture book biography inspired me!
Young Evelyn loved playing music, but at age 10, she suffered dramatic hearing loss. With encouragement from a music teacher, she learned to feel musical vibrations and embraced percussion. Facing discrimination because of her disability, she persisted–and won entrance to a top music school and eventually, worldwide recognition.
A feel-good, inspiring biography of courage and dedication that left me cheering for Evelyn and wanting to learn more about her music!
1
author picked
Listen
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
4,
5,
6, and
7.
What is this book about?
* Schneider Family Book Award Winner *
A gorgeous and empowering picture book biography about Evelyn Glennie, a deaf woman, who became the first full-time solo percussionist in the world. (Cover may vary)
"No. You can't," people said. But Evelyn knew she could. She had found her own way to listen.
From the moment Evelyn Glennie heard her first note, music held her heart. She played the piano by ear at age eight, and the clarinet by age ten. But soon, the nerves in her ears began to deteriorate, and Evelyn was told that, as a deaf girl, she could…
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I love this energetic book about experimental composer Charles Ives for its liveliness, beautiful language, and glorious sounds! It’s also an important example of staying true to yourself and following your own path.
Before he became a composer, young Charles Ives’s life was full of noise–glorious noise! Influenced by his father, a music educator and bandleader, Ives experimented with sound. Like John Cage, he faced ridicule and criticism, and faced roadblocks to having his music performed.
The extraordinary story of the composer Charles Ives.
"Sometimes little Charlie lay in his crib just listening. He heard his mother’s long dress as she moved around his room. He heard big clocks and little clocks. He heard wagons and horse hooves. He heard dogs and crickets and the church bell next door."
Charlie listened all through his boyhood, and as he grew into a man, he found he wanted to re-create in music the sounds that he heard every day. But others couldn’t hear what Charlie heard. They didn’t hear it as music – only as noise. In this…
Ever since childhood, I’ve wondered about people who led inventive, innovative lives. How did they get their inspiration? Where did their ideas come from? How did they take that inspiration and change the world? I found information, but not the answers I was looking for, at the library. When I became an elementary library teacher, new forms of biographies – beautiful picture book biographies about people of all kinds – became available. My students loved them and so did I, and I became inspired to write for children. I’m excited that my first two picture book biographies, which received starred reviews, are out in the world – with more coming your way!
I shared books with children as an elementary librarian for 20 years, and I know what makes a great read-aloud!
This story about the guitar-picking little girl who grew up to inspire music legends like Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Little Richard begs to be not read aloud, but performed! The energy in this picture book leaps off the page! Pair this with Rosetta’s music for an awesome listening and dancing session!
"A profile as bold and vivacious as the singer herself." -Kirkus (starred review)
"Terrific for all collections that want to inspire the musically inclined and highlight innovative pioneers." -Booklist (starred review)
"Bolden uses alliteration, assonance, repetition, and rhythm to create an irresistibly musical text that effectively communicates the feel of Tharpe's music. Christie's lively illustrations. . . capture the physicality of Tharpe's performance style and the intensity of her sound." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Impressive offering about an often-overlooked figure in American music." -The Horn Book (starred review)
"The marriage of Bolden's words and Christie's pictures is almost as satisfying…
I have loved music since childhood. I grew up on a farm in Western Pennsylvania. My loving, hard-working parents gave my three brothers and me the best life possible. I began singing at our little Chewton Christian Church when asked to do so. Piano lessons began, and for 12 years, my sweet teacher, Joann Thurston, taught me piano, but I realized my true love was singing. She always allowed me to sing as well as play the piano. I attended Westminister College, majoring in elementary education with a music minor. Following graduation, my first job was teaching music to 1500 schoolchildren in Blacksburg, Virginia.
The author, Mike Venezia, believes in having fun. If you want to introduce children to composers and music, make it fun for them. While reading the delightful, imaginative story about Aaron Copland play compositions such as Rodeo, Appalachian Spring, Billy the Kid, and Fanfare for the Common Man.
Mike Venezia has a very interesting, engaging way of introducing art, inventions, and period photography. Visual images bring his numerous children’s classical music books alive. He makes his composers become real people, like you and me.
As the Director of the Center for Texas Music History at Texas State University, I’m excited to stay on top of all that’s being done in the field of Texas Music and let me assure you that it is a great way to spend one’s days. Texas music and culture reflect the state’s diverse and contested past, and every month, it seems that there is not only a new artist appearing on the stage to sing her or his truth but a writer helping us to understand how those truths fit into the larger narratives of Texas history.
This is one of the books that had me inserting an unsolicited “did you know that...” into just about every conversation I had while reading it. Terry Allen is a singular visual and musical artist whose story exemplifies what a rich and contrarian place Texas is.
I knew something of what I might find in a Terry Allen biography, and yet there’s so much more: 1950s Lubbock wrestling promoters and Thai psychedelic bands, David Byrne and Marcel Duchamp, and, most compellingly, the lifelong love of partners Terry and Jo Harvey Allen. I cannot imagine many authors up for the task.
Brendan Greaves expertly delivers as one of those rare characters who understands that Allen’s roles in fine art and country music are not only on equal footing but of a piece. Greaves also oversaw the masterful reissue of Allen’s iconic albums Juarez and Lubbock on Everything, which makes it all…
Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Allen himself, his family members (including actor and poet Jo Harvey Allen, his wife and artistic partner of more than sixty years), and his many notable friends, colleagues, and collaborators (from musicians like David Byrne and Kurt Vile to artists such as Bruce Nauman and Kiki Smith); full access to the artist's home, studio, and voluminous journals and archives; and over twenty years of collaboration and friendship with Allen, author Brendan Greaves limns a revealing portrait, as deeply researched as it is intimate, as provocative as it is poetic, of a singularly multivalent storyteller…
My father, a huge Ella Fitzgerald fan, had a bunch of her records, and took us to hear her live once. So I knew mid-century jazz, but I had yet to discover its early origins. From the first, I knew my trilogy was set in the 1920s and one of the main characters had to be a jazz musician. I began collecting dozens of recordings by early jazz and blues artists, reading books about them, and I developed an enthusiasm for these early musicians. I found that the original “jazz maniacs” had the same passion for their music that I felt about rock and roll in the early 1960s.
This book helped me understand the lives of young male jazz musicians in the early 20th century. A wacky, ecstatic, fragmented, kaleidoscopic, memoir—nostalgic always for Bloomington, Indiana, and his college days in the early 1920s. There Carmichael met his pals Monk and Bix, both of whom died too young. He dedicates the book to them and remembers them fondly. Monk, a surrealistic poet, and Bix, a great musical genius, they understood each other immediately. Bix responded to one of Monk’s poems saying, “I am not a swan.” There is a Dadaist flavor to Monk’s writing, as well as some of Hoagy’s: “The years had pants.” Intertwined with these memories is the slow, jerky progress of Carmichael’s journey from a would-be composer to a famous songwriter.
The swing composer relates personal experiences in his musical career includi his association with such personalities as Bix Beiderbecks and William Moenkhaus.
My doctorate is in music, and although I am now more active as a composer, I was at one time a performer (pianist). Thus, I have both personal ties to the author (my mother) and professional insights into the subject matter. I have also interviewed a number of the world’s leading violinists (Bell, Chase, Markov, Zukerman, and others) and composed two works for the instrument (my Op. 4 and Op. 5, published by Broadbent & Dunn). Moreover, my series, The Passion of Elena Bianchi, also involves classical music and musicians, and echoes Paganini Agitato with concerts, poker, the great love of a child, and elements of the supernatural and/or demonic.
Paganini is not one of the composers the author discusses. However, I consider Secret Lives an important book, simply because it “spills the beans” about a number of these giants.
Gioachino Rossini is portrayed with some of his numerous shortcomings (though Paganini’s dalliances achieved far more notoriety). I shall mention a few significant historical facts: (1) he and Paganini were very close friends, (2) Paganini wrote a set of brilliant variations, I Palpiti,based on an aria from Rossini’s opera, Tancredi, and (3) Paganini did indeed conduct the debut of another Rossini opera, Matilde di Shobran.
Secret Lives was also a source I tapped for some of the information I presented about composers (including, most notably, Richard Wagner) in one of my own novels.
In the fine tradition of "Secret Lives of Great Authors" and "Secret Lives of Great Artists" comes the latest entry in Quirk's successful series: "Secret Lives of Great Composers". You've heard their scores in countless movies, from "Fantasia" to "Apocalypse Now" - now get the skinny on their tumultuous lives, loves, and lunacy. You'll learn that Frederic Chopin had his heart removed before burial, due to his grave fear of being buried alive. Sergei Rachmaninoff hated the sound of his own music and despised performing it. Gustav Mahler was rarely invited to dinner parties because he would eat nothing but…
I've been a working journalist for 50 years, and as a child of TV, especially in the 1960s, I grew up with some of the most memorable TV themes ever written. I started writing about TV in the 1980s, and since moving to Los Angeles in 1986, have used every opportunity to meet and interview all of my favorite composers of movie and TV music. The result is this book, which looks at the history of TV themes and, in a larger sense, music written for TV generally. Every genre of TV, from crime to sitcoms, westerns to adventure, has had fun, often compelling, and truly memorable music, and I've tried to celebrate it here.
Bernard Herrmann is revered as one of the movies' greatest composers.
Imagine starting your Hollywood career with music for Citizen Kane!
He enjoyed a very productive 10-year relationship with director Alfred Hitchcock, which produced such masterpieces as Vertigo, Psycho, and North by Northwest; he also worked with Francois Truffaut on Fahrenheit 451, composed the original Twilight Zone theme, and capped his career with music for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.
Yet he could be cantankerous and difficult, antagonizing both friends and colleagues with his temperamental behavior and insistence upon the highest standards of music and drama.
I love the fact that Smith writes as well about the music as he does about the composer, and the reader walks away knowing lots about both.
No composer contributed more to film than Bernard Herrmann, who in over 40 scores enriched the work of such directors as Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, and Martin Scorsese. In this first major biography of the composer, Steven C. Smith explores the interrelationships between Herrmann's music and his turbulent personal life, using much previously unpublished information to illustrate Herrmann's often outrageous behavior, his working methods, and why his music has had such lasting impact. From his first film ("Citizen Kane") to his last ("Taxi Driver"), Herrmann was a master of evoking psychological nuance and dramatic tension through music, often…
I've been a working journalist for 50 years, and as a child of TV, especially in the 1960s, I grew up with some of the most memorable TV themes ever written. I started writing about TV in the 1980s, and since moving to Los Angeles in 1986, have used every opportunity to meet and interview all of my favorite composers of movie and TV music. The result is this book, which looks at the history of TV themes and, in a larger sense, music written for TV generally. Every genre of TV, from crime to sitcoms, westerns to adventure, has had fun, often compelling, and truly memorable music, and I've tried to celebrate it here.
Maybe the last of the great Viennese-born classical composers, Korngold enjoyed enormous success in Europe in the 1920s.
Invited to Hollywood in 1934, he began writing film music for the swashbucklers, costume dramas, and historical pageants of Warner Bros., often starring the likes of Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, and Claude Rains: Captain Blood, The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk, Kings Row, and others.
Korngold thought of movies as "operas without singing" and wrote lavish, richly orchestrated scores filled with memorable melodies. Fleeing the Nazi tyranny in 1938, he became one of the greatest composers in the Golden Age of movies.
Carroll spent decades researching his life, it's a thorough and compelling read, and it saddens me that the book is now long out of print.
