This month’s book was published late 2020, and has already become a favorite of mine! It’s complete title is Music and How it Works: The Complete Guide for Kids – published by DK publishing. This month though, I’m including it as both the student and teacher book recommendation. Why? Because I enjoyed looking through this and learning new things as much as my students have 🙂

It’s colorful pages along with a wide variety of styles, history, and science make it easy for students to connect with music on new levels.

My favorite part of the book? It includes a QR code at the beginning of the book that opens up to several Spotify playlists designed to go along with the book. Each playlist even provides notes of things to listen for as you work through the songs!

Our students are as vast and varied as the styles and elements of music we can study. Some will be more interested in the various styles of music throughout history. Some will want to know how different instruments work. Others will want to dive into creating and producing their own music. Still others will ask if animals like music, why songs get stuck in our heads, or why music makes us want to get up and dance.

And guess what? This book covers every single one of those topics!

Whether you place this book in your waiting area, use it to incorporate history, world music, and science into the songs your students are learning, or spend a few minutes at the end of a lesson exploring a new topic from the book, both you and your students will be sure to enjoy having this book around 🙂

Check your local music or books store, or grab it from Amazon here.

–images below are from the publisher’s website–

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Have you used this book to inspire your students? I’d love to hear what impacted them the most!