From Composer Highlights, an educational coloring book series, by
Leonice Thompson Kidd. The pictures and text on each page of this interesting
series tell the stories of twelve famous composers and their families-their
lifestyles, travels, difficulties, accomplishments, compositions, and maps of
significant places in their lives, as well as customs, clothing fashions,
cities, buildings, instruments of their times. At the beginning of each book
there is a page "Understanding These Words". By choosing the colors to
complete the pictures, students invest some imagination and effort into the
completed stories, aided by a few lines of narrative on each page.
Age 6 up. Good for studio, home school, classroom, camps, gifts or awards.
(For class projects, different pages can be assigned to various students and
then reassembled to complete a study of a selected composer.) Coloring Books are
8 ½ X 11 inches, 32 pages.
LK005 Felix & Fanny Mendelssohn. Drawings by Kevin R. Murphy
The Mendelssohns had a happy and privileged childhood, and were always close. On
p. 9 the drawing shows Felix playing Goethe's piano, and quotes Felix, "I
play sometimes six. . .even eight hours at a time." The text on the page
adds, "While visiting Goethe, Felix not only impressed the poet with his
playing but showed his side as a 'prankster.' He took a bellows from the
fireplace and used it to distupt a young lady's hairdo."
As adults they traveled widely, married, composed, and performed for royalty.
Fanny adored her brother, and "did not work at publishing her own music
until six months before her death, encouraged by her husband." Some of her
compositions were mistakenly attributed to Felix.
