picture book Archives - Anastasia Suen

Hannah and the Wrong Note
by Shane Goth (Author) and Sara Gagnon-Dumont (Illustrator)
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Booktalk: When Hannah plays piano, music dances in the air. Her notes line up and hold hands, stand straight and spin. They keep perfect pitch and a steady tempo. And Hannah, elegant and serious, dreams of becoming a famous musician.

For her school concert, Hannah chooses an ambitious piece and vows not to play a single wrong note. But no matter how diligently she practices, a wrong note sneaks into her music-including on the day of the performance. Ashamed and upset at the imperfection, Hannah sulks … until she sees her little sister, Jenny, lovingly dance and play with the wrong note, eventually inspiring Hannah to toss out her sheet music and improvise something completely new. And Hannah likes the sound! The notes aren’t perfect, but they are perfectly hers.

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The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts to the World
by James Howe (Author) and Jack Wong (Illustrator)
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Booktalk: At a young age, Yo-Yo Ma discovered a remarkable gift for the cello, playing Bach from memory by age four. His technique was far beyond his years, but even as he grew and became a world-class musician—studying at Juilliard, performing at Carnegie Hall at a young age, even playing on television before the president of the United States—he wanted to use his gift for something deeper, something bigger.

As he asked question after question, trying to understand his place in the world, he discovered something that every culture has in common: music.

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