For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart
Grade 2–4—Maria Anna Walpurga Ignatia Mozart was a musical prodigy in her own right and shared considerable childhood fame with her younger brother, Wolfgang. This picture-book biography quickly sketches the siblings' close relationship and their long European concert tour and then goes on to tell in greater detail about her quiet growing-up and adult years as her brother quickly rose to prominence. Rusch organizes the account into short segments labeled with musical terms designating the units of a sonata—"The First Movement," "Allegro," "Development," "Cadenza," "Finale." The concluding author's note, "Encore," is a two-page biography threaded with explanations of the 18th-century limitations on women's participation in the music world. Johnson and Fancher add warmth and texture to the story, blending collage and painting on canvas. Costumes and backgrounds incorporate brocade fragments, and bits of music scores frame carriages, musical instruments, and building features. Text is on inset pages that appear to be crumbling and fading, as though taken from a very old book. Catherine Brighton's picture bookMozart, Scenes from the Childhood of the Great Composer(Doubleday, 1990) is narrated by Nannerl, as she was called by her family, and gives a richer account of the famous childhood tour. Maria's long, relatively uneventful life, emphasized here, is hardly the remarkable story promised in the subtitle, but this attractive book offers a peek at women's history and will serve where more is needed on the Mozarts.—Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston(c) Copyright 2011.  Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc.  No redistribution permitted.