I am sitting down to select resources for some artists, composers, poets, etc. I love the books by Mike Venezia and was wondering how to select other resources. Iam not sure where to start because I really don’t know anything about these people myself. Some of the names I am interested in are: Audobon, Monet, Cassat, Larsson, Parrish, Moss, Bach, Mozart, Chopin, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Lewis Carroll and Robert Louis Stevenson (We have A Child’s Garden of Verses).
I like books that are full of concise information;)
We’ve enjoyed the Opal Wheeler books for all of our composers so far. Through Zeezok Publishing you can get the book and also a cd with selected works, coloring sheets, and printable sheet music.
I’m pretty sure the SCM Bookfinder has any other books I might recomend so I would start there, request a bunch from your library and see which ones really perk your interest!
I like the “Getting To Know the World’s Greatest Artists/Composers” series. They are shorter than the Opal Wheeler books…each one is only 32 pages, but we usually read them in a couple sittings. For Monet, we read Linnea in Monet’s Garden which they enjoyed. For poet study, we like the Poetry for Young People series…both poets you mentioned are included.
For our music studies, I have a really old Childcraft encylopedia that we read from, but it’s probably not too easy to find. 😉 I’ll be using some of the Getting To Know books this year since we’re covering a couple newer composers (Leonard Bernstein and Duke Ellington).
You might consider this—go to Wikipedia and read a little, and look at the art on wikicommons. Then, for music . . . go to Youtube and try the top hits. Look for the fun ones that also show colorful changing bars and stuff with the music. It’s that easy. Have fun!
When I’m trying to find resources for a new artist or composer that I am unfamiliar with, I usually go to Amazon.com and do a search on that person under “children’s books”. I scroll through the books and see which ones have good review and look interesting and then check those out through my inter-library loan. If we love the books, I try to acquire them for our home library.
That being said, I have shared some of our favorite resources for picture study and composer study on my blog in these two posts: