{"id":422,"date":"2009-03-19T23:15:02","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T03:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/2009\/03\/19\/review-of-the-composer-is-dead-by-lemony-snicket\/"},"modified":"2009-03-19T23:15:02","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T03:15:02","slug":"review-of-the-composer-is-dead-by-lemony-snicket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=422","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Composer Is Dead, by Lemony Snicket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"image421\" height=\"208\" alt=\"composer_is_dead.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/composer_is_dead.jpg\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The Composer Is Dead<\/em><\/p>\n<p>written by Lemony Snicket<\/p>\n<p>music by Nathaniel Stookey<\/p>\n<p>illustrations by Carson Ellis<\/p>\n<p>HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.\u00a0 36 pages.\u00a0 1 CD<\/p>\n<p>I love these new <em>Peter and the Wolf <\/em>wannabes!\u00a0 Like <em>The Shoebird, The Composer Is Dead<\/em> is a picture book story with orchestration.\u00a0 The accompanying CD is narrated by Lemony Snicket himself.<\/p>\n<p>The story is fun, though not particularly captivating.\u00a0 However, it\u00a0does serve to introduce the instruments of the orchestra, and I did find the accompanying music beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>The composer is dead.\u00a0 All the instrumental sections of the orchestra are suspects, but they have a wide variety of alibis.\u00a0 A lot of generalities are given about the instruments, which are sometimes fun and sometimes simply stereotypical.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Violins answered first, of course.\u00a0 The violin section is divided into First Violins, who have the trickier parts to play, and the Second Violins, who are more fun at parties.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The tuba said, <em>&#8220;I&#8217;m a confirmed bachelor.\u00a0 I was home all night playing cards with my landlady, the Harp, taking sips of warm milk from a little blue cup.&#8221;<\/em>\u00a0 The accompanying tuba and harp duet was particularly beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>I thought the closing was a bit lame &#8212; that orchestras have murdered composers for years, so this is no different.\u00a0 So the mystery in the book falls rather flat.<\/p>\n<p>As with <em>The Shoebird, <\/em>this adds some nice variety to ways you can teach kids about the orchestra.\u00a0 This one had nicer music and a story that helps listeners notice the differences between the types of instruments.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s time to throw away <em>Peter and the Wolf <\/em>yet, but this is a nice addition to the Introduction-to-the-Orchestra repertoire.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0061236276\/sonderbooksco-20\" target=\"outside\">Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Composer Is Dead written by Lemony Snicket music by Nathaniel Stookey illustrations by Carson Ellis HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.\u00a0 36 pages.\u00a0 1 CD I love these new Peter and the Wolf wannabes!\u00a0 Like The Shoebird, The Composer Is Dead is a picture book story with orchestration.\u00a0 The accompanying CD is narrated by Lemony Snicket himself. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audiobooks","category-picture-book-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}