ROAR-chestra!: A Wild Story of Musical Words Robert Heidbreder & Duýan Petričić (Illustrations)

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. It will be released May 4, 2021 by Kids Can Press.

Robert Heidbreder  & Dusan Petricic are masters of their craft. Never has learning musical terminology been full of so much joy. 

It begins with bow tied animals of all sorts waiting while the human conductor arrives in front of them. 

Then the conductor waves the baton to command allegro!

And the creatures begin to move accordingly, "quickly, swiftly, race, run fly!" 

Each time the conductor switches to a different tempo, the animals follow suit, and a new line of poetry captions it all. The piece moves along through adagio, glissando, staccato, dolce, fortissimo and pianissimo. Readers can almost imagine the music that accompanies each part. 

I like that the conductor could be either gender. I appreciate the humour that Petričić integrates into the animal characters. I love the energy in Heidbreder's poetry. It's impossible to imagine a world where these words and images are not always together. 

There are many ways to make this book interactive. I can imagine reading this to a group of children and have them guess what the term might mean based on the Conductor's baton movements. If the space is big enough children can move along with the animals. There is also the fun of figuring out which animal fits into each case. 

The only quibble I have with this book is that it doesn't have music samples in it.