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Whether your kid is already a musical prodigy, or has just a little creative, emotional energy inside them (hint: every kid has this!), these books are great for inspiring children to express themselves through music.
These stories are great companions to starting music lessons for the first time, and a great way to excite a child about creating beautiful sounds.
Children have a lot of creativity – and reading books about their favourite passion can be a great way for them to release their ideas and get motivated about the next piano lesson. And luckily we’ve picked the best books from the musical genre that we know will be just perfect!
Rickety Stitch is an acclaimed, fantasy adventure graphic novel series about a skeleton bard who goes on a harrowing adventure to find out who he was when he was alive. The story centers around Rickety the Skeleton, remembering a song from his past that gives him clues along the way.
Another great bit is that each book in the series, Book 1: The Road to Epoli, Book 2: Middle-Route Run, and Book 3 (scheduled for release in 2021, have URLs in the back of the book so readers can listen to all the songs and music, arranged by songwriters and composers like Evin Wolverton and Supergiant Games composer, Darren Korb.
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In this book, Olivia drags her friend Melly to Camp Rockaway for a summer of playing music. Even though Melly didn’t want to go, she may find out it’s the exact place she needed to be to finally find her voice through her drums. This is a great middle grade book about overcoming everyone’s expectations and learning to live life to your own beat.
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Mole Music is a lovely story of how the urge to learn an instrument can fill one’s life with new meaning, as well as bring people (or animals!) together. Beautiful paintings by acclaimed author/illustrator David McPhail.
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A fun book to read aloud, the adorable rhymes about the sounds of the band’s instruments lend to a rhythm and groove that get children interacting with rhythm first hand.
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Beautiful watercolor images illustrate the symphony of the marsh, as different animals pipe in with their own addition to the sound. Includes glossary of musical terms and animal species.
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A little boy creates instruments out of found objects as he interacts with people on his front stoop. Contains repeatable rhythms that are fun to read aloud and gets kids thinking about the sounds in the world around them.
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Interactive book that lets children touch the pages to play the instruments! Cute rhymes and multisensory fun.
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A concert gets out of hand when the animals at a neighboring stage storm the stage and play the instruments themselves. Based on the author’s song, this humorous picture book, for preschool to second grade will put a smile on a child face. Highly recommend.
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This is a well-loved book for children learning to play the piano; delighting sound comes out from the book on every page. Kids will surely enjoy having this gem.
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This book is essentially a music lesson in alphabet form. Teaching children about everything from instruments, common music terms, composers, and even some musical styles, Wargin educates children on the various intricacies of the musical world. This book is ideal for both parents and music teachers to help kids learn about music.
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Wombat is having cello lessons but is finding that learning how to read music and understand the meaning of music notes and values, is much too hard to understand.
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What do you do when a piano shows up in your yard? Take a cat-nap? Use it as a coffee table? What’s a band to do when one of its instruments goes missing? And what does a yellow sock have to do with anything?
Join Filippa and friends in a whacky adventure when they wake up to find a piano in the front yard. Kids will love the bright and whimsical artwork in this book as they find out how the piano is returned to the band, new friends are found, and music is made.
Juha Virta is a teacher, artist, musician, and writer living and working in Helsinki, Finland. His previous series with Marika Maijala, Sylvi Kepponen, has been translated and published around the world.
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The Man with the Violin is about the time that world class violinist Joshua Bell performed in a Washington DC metro station and no one stopped to listen, as told through the eyes of an imaginary child. Beautifully illustrated, it’s a wonderful story about the importance of paying attention to the world around us and has won multiple awards, including the TD Children’s Literature Award.
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The Dance of the Violin tells a story from violinist Joshua Bell’s childhood, reliving a time when he made a mistake while performing in a music competition but kept on going and ended up winning third prize. It’s a charming story that reminds the reader of the rewards of perseverance.
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Do you remember the first time you discovered a musical artist you really loved? Have you listened to them over and over again at different points throughout your life? This book harnesses that feeling, by collecting together 80 of music’s finest artists to guide young people through the good, bad and sad times. Whatever the feeling, these artists have been there and sung about it. Organized by mood, people of all ages can dip into this collection of musicians to discover new artists from decades past to present day.
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In Dan Zanes’ House Party!, the Grammy Award–winning Zanes has curated a rich selection of folk songs that comprise an essential musical cross-section of the American experience and its multicultural, immigrant underpinnings. The selections include the standard songs we all know and love, along with folk classics. Each song is accompanied by a brief narrative on its historical context, followed by lyrics, notation, and chords. Among the songs you’ll learn to play: Erie Canal, Pay Me My Money Down, Titanic, Waltzing Matilda, The Farmer Is the One, Wabash Cannonball, Sloop John B., Old Joe Clark, Skip to My Lou, King Kong Kitchie, and We Shall Not Be Moved.
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Do you remember the first time you discovered a musical artist you really loved? Have you listened to them over and over again at different points throughout your life? This book harnesses that feeling, by collecting together 80 of music’s finest artists to guide young people through the good, bad and sad times. Whatever the feeling, these artists have been there and sung about it. Organized by mood, people of all ages can dip into this collection of musicians to discover new artists from decades past to present day.
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Roy is a lion and a sound catcher. He catches the sounds of the city and makes them into music, trying to avoid the annoying attentions of his neighbor, Jemmy. Feeling like his music isn’t good enough, Roy goes on a journey to find the best sound in the world for inspiration. He hears the pitter-patter of the rain in the forest, the wind whistling through the desert, and the hustle and bustle of the souk at sunrise, but none of it helps—he can’t decide which is the best sound. Just as he’s about to give up, he hears a familiar voice . . . can Jemmy teach him that perhaps there are lots of beautiful sounds, not just one, and that for Jemmy, Roy’s music is the best of all? This gorgeous debut picture book is a heart-warming tribute to the power of friendship.
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The Poppy books are all great intros for little ones to classical music, but this one is a particular favorite in our house.
In this adventure, your child is guided through Venice and will hear classical clips of music and new instruments, all alongside Poppy the puppy and friends. We don’t invest in a lot of noise-making books, as the sounds always end up being grating, but the sound quality is really crisp with the Poppy books, and we actually look forward to repeated reads!
On top of the exposure to beautiful music, we also love that fun, new vocabulary, like opera and gondola, are woven throughout this cute storyline!
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