Picture Book Review: The Composer Is Dead

Weekly Geeks
April 2nd was International Children's Book Day. And April is National Poetry Month. In celebration, I have two lovely options for you this week:
Option A: Be a kid!You could read a picture book (or two or three) and share what you read.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Genre: Humor/Mystery

Release Date: 3/3/2009

About the Book: The composer is dead-and someone in the orchestra is to blame! The inspector must question all the instruments for they all seem to have a motive, but they also have an alibi. Who killed the composer?

GreenBeanTeenQueen Says: Ok, I will admit that I got through only four books in the Series of Unfortunate Events because I just couldn't take all the terrible stuff those poor Baudelaire orphans had to deal with! Even though I couldn't finish the series, I did like Lemony Snickett's humor, so I was eager to pick up this new picture book.

The Composer Is Dead is lots of fun and it had me laughing. I thought maybe I appreciated some of the jokes because my mom is a music teacher and I've grown up around classical music and played the clarinet briefly in elementary school. But I gave it to my fiance, who is not a musical person at all, and he enjoyed reading it as well, so I'm sure there's something for everyone.

The best part of the book is that it comes with a CD which includes the author reading the book along with accompaniment from the San Francisco Symphony. The second half of the CD is the music only, with no narration. This makes reading the book with the CD a treat, since you get to hear the waltz from the strings and bird sounds from the flutes. The illustrations are simple, which might make the story somewhat long for younger children and due to the length of the CD, it's probably not the shortest read-aloud picture book.

Overall, I think this is a fun way to introduce readers to classical music. There's plenty of humor for children and adults, which makes this a book I wouldn't mind reading more than once. I would definitely recommend this to any musicians or music lovers of all ages!