The Story Orchestra Books Review
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We featured The Story Orchestra Books on our Coop Faves podcast! We love these beautifully illustrated, musical story books.
What are The Story Orchestra Books?
Each book retells a famous ballet, opera or program music story, from Mozart to Vivaldi, in a child-friendly way, paired with sound clips of orchestras playing from their musical scores.
The books also include a biography of the composer, a glossary of musical terms and a discussion of the instruments and musical techniques used.
The final page of each book has all the orchestra clips with information about each clip: for example, The Four Seasons book Clip 1 is the 1st movement of “Spring” and has the description: “This is the opening theme of the WHOLE piece and announces that spring is here. The high strings all play the same simple rhythm and pattern of notes at the same time, which feel like birds tweeting and lambs hopping in the countryside.”
3 Reasons Why it is a Favorite
The beautiful illustration!!
The colors are vivid and exciting. The images are soft and pretty - no sharp lines or harsh images. Each two page spread really brings the story to life even before even reading the passage.
The retelling of the each story
Some kids are already familiar with the stories, so the retelling doesn’t stray too far. The Four Seasons and The Carnival of the Animals have unique stories since there isn’t one agreed upon plot, but many versions based on the musical journey the composers created.
The Education
The Story Orchestra books share popular stories from ballet, opera and program music. Each book provides a brief biography of the Composer and some information about the music and its creation. The books introduce musical concepts that can be found in the music and specifically, the clips chosen to tell the story.
How We Use the Books
I read the ballet Story Orchestra books throughout the school year to my young dance students to teach them the stories, and about the music and the composers.
I keep the books in my home when not at my studio and my 4 year old LOVES to grab one and read it together. I often am requested to read it twice through and then he will explore the back page with all songs together on his own. He has great song recognition and loves hearing these songs out and about in the world.
The Story Orchestra Series
Carnival of the Animals - Camille Saint-Saens
(pre-order now for release in Oct ‘22)
In the Hall of the Mountain King - Edvard Greig (anticipated release of Oct ‘22)
To listen to our review, check it out here!
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