This is a marvelous book about the orchestra. It introduces the concept of the symphony by showing the musicans preparing for a concert by bathing and dressing and going to the concert hall. It's a little long for storytime, but for a kid with a good attention span it would be a great one-on-one. It makes me kind of sad that it's no longer very well known, because it's just terrific. ( )

What a little treat, just charming. Picked it up because it was mentioned in Wild Things and I can't imagine anyone would be bothered by the nudity (implied but not really shown), honestly, the things people get worked up about, sigh. The integration of text and image was so well done I would have imagined a single mind behind it, but not so, apparently. There's so much to see, this could easily be a favourite that's returned to again and again. A real pleasure.

One might mention to children that it was written a long time ago, and there are likely to be many more women in the Philharmonic Orchestra these days!

(Note: 5 stars = amazing, wonderful, 4 = very good book, 3 = decent read, 2 = disappointing, 1 = awful, just awful. I'm fairly good at picking for myself so end up with a lot of 4s). ( )

Very cute book that both kids and their adults will enjoy. One thing that stands out in a negative way is that the book specifically enumerates the number of women and men players. This is fine except it reflects a 1980s idea of how many women would be playing at this level, which is disappointing and we edit the numbers on the fly when reading to our kids. I wish there was an updated version that eliminated this little bit of dated sexism.

31 months - A very cute and different story about what it takes to get 105 people ready to entertain an audience. ( )

A strange book. I would have expected to like it more than I did, but I also would have expected it to be more ... something. ( )