>Teaching Little Fingers to Play

by Roger Sutton
May 17, 2008 | Filed in Articles & Opinion
>Despite my memories of the very tense Sr. Irene Marie (who, probably to everyone's lasting relief, "jumped the wall," as we used to call leaving the convent in the 1960s), I'm immensely enjoying Tricia Tunstall's Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson (S&S). Noting that "there are very few occasions when a child spends an extended period alone with an unrelated adult," Tunstall's observations flicker between her own childhood piano lessons and those she now gives as an adult. There are plenty of parallels for those of us who go mano a mano with child readers, so check it out.

And, fellow survivors--what can you still play? I still have "Lightly Row," "Spinning Wheel" and "The Juggler" in my fingers.
Roger Sutton
Roger Sutton

Editor Emeritus Roger Sutton was editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc., from 1996-2021. He was previously editor of The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books and a children's and young adult librarian. He received his MA in library science from the University of Chicago in 1982 and a BA from Pitzer College in 1978.

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Laurie

>Thank you very much for recommending this book. It is excellent! Even if you've never taken piano lessons, this will remind you of all the piano lessons in literature--it brought to mind Miss Cobb, the piano teacher in the Betsy-Tacy series, and Madeleine L'Engle's first novel The Small Rain.

Posted : Jun 19, 2008 01:37

waltergiant

>Czerny, baby! Czerny...

Posted : May 21, 2008 04:10

Anne Bingham

>Here we go
Up a row
To a
Birth-
day
Party.

Posted : May 20, 2008 07:39

Elissa

>I thought these were gone from my head until something brought me back to old Mexico:

Sing chaponegas, ole
(Ole!)
Dance chaponegas, ole
(Ole!)

I'm quite sure that "chaponegas" is wrong, but that's how my six-year-old brain remembers it. Does anyone know? Google laughed at me.

Posted : May 20, 2008 01:23

HG

>Oh and on a tangent - I finally saw Sunday in the Park last month and loved it. I thought the stage was stunning - my only disappointment was that I didn't "buy" Daniel Evans as George in the first act, though I liked him just fine in the second.

Posted : May 19, 2008 11:25

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