Book List: Where Music Tells the Story

Ginny Hunsberger brings us a marvelous list of books in which music plays a central role. Consider checking these out from the library or wrapping them up for Christmas.

After a recent trip to the library, I was reading through a new stack of books to my sons. In that stack, we discovered two books where songs played a central role in the story. We hadn’t discovered books like these in many years.

When my second son was little, we read and sang Westcott’s Skip to My Lou on repeat. With whimsical illustrations and catchy tune, Skip to My Lou was a long lasting, early favorite with our sons. It captured short attention spans and young imaginations. Combining two favorites—story and song—is a sure way to keep us reading.

We found our first new book while studying the War of 1812. Based on a true story, Sisters of Scituate Light by Stephen Krensky tells about two sisters whose father was a lighthouse keeper in Scituate Light near Boston during the War of 1812. The sisters were left to tend the light when their father Simeon Bates took the rest of the family on a trip. While he was away, a British ship came into their harbor one night and sent out a smaller boat with soldiers. The girls were unprotected but clever. They snuck out of the lighthouse into the nearby woods carrying a drum and a fife. Once hidden, the girls played “Yankee Doodle” with gusto. This music was enough to turn the soldiers away from their shore and save Scituate from harm. My boys were thrilled by the idea that a battle was avoided by two young girls courageously playing a song.

Our second find was in the Christmas section at the library. Silent Night: A Christmas Carol is Born by Maureen Brett Hooper shows how this carol was created. The story takes place in Oberndorf, Austria in 1818. As the story goes, it was nearly Christmas Eve and the church organist Franz Gruber discovered that the church organ’s bellows had rotted and needed repair. There wasn’t time to fix the organ before the Christmas Eve service at St. Nicholas Church. Seeking a solution, Father Joseph Mohr gave Gruber a poem he had penned years before and asked him to set it to music. Accompanied by a guitar, the men sang the new carol in the Christmas Eve service, and the congregation joined in. A favorite carol was written to give special music on Christmas Eve—even with the organ in disrepair.

After these two song-themed finds, I sought out more books with like themes. I have added my favorites below. Some of these weave the song into the plot of the story and some tell the story behind the song. I hope you will enjoy them!

With your family:

1. Discuss. What is your favorite song and why? Do you associate a song with a particular time in your life? Play the song and tell your children the story behind it.

2. Put on some favorite music to make chore time fun as a family.

3. Make a playlist of your favorite Christmas carols to enjoy throughout the season. Songs help us reflect the joy our Savior brings.