Can You Hear It?
Grade 2–6—This visual and aural feast invites parents, educators, and young listeners to "listen and look" at 13 examples of pictorial music and visual masterpieces. The introduction prepares readers with an explanation of the connections between composers' notes and art images. A woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige, the pointillism of Seurat, and landscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael and Thomas Cole are among those included in the presentation. The paired examples invite listeners to identify solo instruments or orchestral themes that characterize an image found in the visual art, e.g., "Can you hear the gun battles?" in a pairing of a Remington painting with Aaron Copeland'sBilly the Kid: Gun Battle. Although seven of the musical pieces are by either Vivaldi or Saint-Saëns, the recordings of works by Gershwin, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Copland reflect a broad range of artists and orchestral styles from America and Europe. This treasure completes a larger unit of study or simply gives pleasure with a presentation of inspired works in dual media for children's appreciation.—Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TXCopyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.