A History of Music

I’m very excited to announce that, over lockdown, I had the pleasure of co-writing… A History of Music for Children! It’s a lovely book which has been beautifully illustrated by the wonderful Rose Blake, and is published by Thames & Hudson, and is released on August 26 2021.

I wrote it last year together with Mary Richards, who has written lots of books about art and artists, including many for children. While I can’t claim it’s an ‘all you ever needed to know about music EVER!!’ type of tome, our aim with this book was to be as broad and inclusive as possible, to get kids thinking about music in all it’s forms…. music they know and love, music they have never heard before, and music they may not have noticed going on around them every day. And also to encourage them to try making music of their own.

It was a real challenge writing something that was concise, easy to understand and also wide-ranging and comprehensive… BUT I hope we managed it!? There book also includes a link to a Spotify playlist which links to most of the pieces we’ve mentioned and many others we didn’t have the space to write about!

I think it’s aimed at the age 8+ but I’m sure that precocious younger children will also enjoy it!

The book is available now at all online (and hopefully most high street) bookshops, including of course Amazon, and Waterstones.

It will be released later this year in the US (Amazon US), Canada and Australia, and is also going to appear in eight (I believe so far) other languages!