The Story of Music

A friendly and inspiring introduction to music history, telling the stories of the world's greatest musicians from Bach to Beyonce.

The Story of Music begins with the early drums and flutes of our ancestors, which date back to the last icea age, through to the modern day. Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom take your on a tour of their personally selected music library which showcases the work of some of the world's most famous artists and few a less well-known ones. The musicians featured include Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry; Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Blondie, Grandmaster Flash, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce as well as Bjork and Kraftwerk. The friendly text and illustrations help children to appreciate the music, highlighting interesting biographical details and picking out key details to spot. The book's large format means the music artwork is reproduced on a wonderfully impactful scale. This really is a book to give and treasure.

The creative team of Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom are well-known for their ground breaking children's information books. Their many awards range the TES Information Book Award for What's Under the Bed? and the English Association Non-fiction award for Charlie's War Illustrated.

Mick Manning (born in Yorkshire, England, 1959) and Brita Granstrom (born in Eskilstuna, Sweden, 1969) work together as a team sharing the illustration and text. They have been producing award-winning non-fiction picture books for almost twenty years. They show that the best non-fiction for children can be scholarly, albeit with a light touch, and can have some of the imagination-stretching qualities of fiction.

They are well known for their exciting performances involving readings and live drawing using overhead camera projection (often involving participation from members of the audience) all mixed with an audio-visual presentation. They appear on a regular basis at major UK book festival venues such as Bath, Cheltenham and Edinburgh International Book Festival. They have appeared at The Royal Society Science Festival and have celebrated The Big Draw at various venues including The Imperial War Museum.

They have worked closely to support libraries and schools, performing voluntarily to school classes in the UK and Sweden and have also attended the American Library Conference and visited US schools.

Many of Manning & Granstrom's books are translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, German, Greek, Danish, Japanese, Norwegian, Swedish and Slovakian.

For the last 12 years Mick & Brita have created, written and illustrated a monthly 5-page gentle pre-school series called 'Max and Kate' for the critically acclaimed US children's magazine Ladybug.

Selection of Franklin Watts books:

The World Is Full of Babies! (Smarties Silver Award Winner); What's under the Bed? (TES Award Winner); Wash, Scrub, and Brush (English Association Award KS1 Winner); Stone Age, Bone Age and many other Wonderwise titles; How Did I Begin? (Rhone Poulenc Science prize winner); How Should I Behave?; Seaside Scientist; My Body Book; My Uncle's Dunkirk; Charlie's War Illustrated (English Association Award KS2 Winner); The Story of Britain; The Brontes - Children of the Moors.

A friendly and inspiring introduction to music history, telling the stories of the world's greatest musicians from Bach to Beyonce. The Story of Music begins with the early drums and flutes of our ancestors, which date back to the last icea age, through to the modern day. Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom take your on a tour of their personally selected music library which showcases the work of some of the world's most famous artists and few a less well-known ones. The musicians featured include Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry; Aretha Franklin, Bob Marley, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Blondie, Grandmaster Flash, Nicki Minaj, Beyonce as well as Bjork and Kraftwerk. The friendly text and illustrations help children to appreciate the music, highlighting interesting biographical details and picking out key details to spot. The book's large format means the music artwork is reproduced on a wonderfully impactful scale. This really is a book to give and treasure. The creative team of Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom are well-known for their ground breaking children's information books. Their many awards range the TES Information Book Award for What's Under the Bed? and the English Association Non-fiction award for Charlie's War Illustrated .

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