Lives of the Musicians

Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought)
Kathleen Krull
Kathryn Hewitt, Illustrator
Harcourt, 1993 96 pages
Grades 3-7
Non-Fiction

Krull offers short narrative chapters describing the lives and major works of nineteen composers/musicians arranged chronologically from Vivaldi to Woody Guthrie. With the exception of Guthrie and Scott Joplin, they are all in the classical vein and range from the "old school" (Mozart) to modern (Charles Ives). All are from the western world, two are women and only one is a person of color. That said, these are the talents that have shaped music as we now know it and set the course for our cultural cannon of classical music. Highly readable, the chapters are brief and written conversationally with fun facts that kids would be interested in (what did Beethoven eat for breakfast?). A glossary of musical terms, index, and bibliography for further reading and listening (at this point very dated) are included at the back of the volume. Interested readers can move onto Krull and Hewitt's other such titles such as The Lives of the Artists and The Lives of the Presidents for more biographical fun.

I can't believe it’s been twenty-five years since this book came out. I remember its release and loved both the subject matter and conversational writing style. This summer our reading club theme is "music" (so fun!), which led me back to this title and was pleasantly surprised to find it as fresh as when it was released in '93. The writing is high interest, lively, and fun. The full-color cartoon-style illustrations are reminiscent of the "Who Was" books, yet came out before they did. The Krull/Hewitt titles will certainly appeal to the same audience. Educational, while entertaining, readers may be inspired to listen to some of the featured composers, enriching their musical tastes and may even be inspired to try their own hands at composing. Krull manages to make figures from the past relate-able to the present and show readers that talented and famous people can be just like us--or completely batty. Humorous, yet inspiring, this book delivers the goods without ever being boring.