Music Is
PreSchool-Grade 3-After singing the praises of an orchestra in Zin! Zin! Zin! A Violin (S & S, 1995) and a band in Our Marching Band (Putnam, 2001), Moss now extols the joys of music itself. In rhyming text, he explains that music is important because it appears in all aspects of our lives, from the mundane "music in the elevator,/sometimes music on the phone" to the exciting "Brass or strings, when played with brio,/lift my spirits to the sky." Many different forms are mentioned, including orchestral and opera, and several of the terms and names will need some adult explanation. ("Verdi, Humperdinck, Puccini;/opera is such a thrill./Those by Bizet and Rossini please me,/and they always will.") However, the author's passion for his subject is clearly felt and expressed. The illustrations, with their elongated, cartoonlike figures and shapes, are dominated by slightly muted shades of blue, red, green, and peach. The placement of the text on the page often reinforces the mood of the message or words. The names of opera composers appear slightly larger, as if sung loudly toward an audience, and the words describing dance seem to skip along the bottom of the page with the dancing feet. This is a great read-aloud that can be paired with Moss's earlier books or with Karla Kuskin's The Philharmonic Gets Dressed (HarperCollins, 1982).Jane Marino, Scarsdale Public Library, NYCopyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.