A Young Scholar's Guide to Composers is something that I've had on my list of "wants" for a while. You see, I have used a number of books published by Bright Ideas Press, and have been very pleased with all of them for the obvious care invested in their creation. The books are lively, interesting, and full of fun activities to help cement learned information in young minds. The Guide to Composers continues the tradition.

The book comprises 32 lessons, a full year's worth, including 26 biographies of famous composers ranging from 1678 to the present time, and six lessons giving overviews of major time periods in classical music, from ancient to modern. I know what you may be thinking—it's what I thought while reading the description of the course. What are the additional lessons, or are some composers so important that they spill over into more than one lesson? What makes up a lesson, and how much teacher preparation is involved? Do I really have time for this enrichment music course?

The book comes in both PDF e-book form, as well as a printed book. I found the e-book very easy to navigate. There's a sidebar listing major sections of the book, including the Table of Contents. When you're looking at the Table of Contents or list of topics in the Appendix, you can click on any listing and you're taken right to the page.

Teacher's helps include a note explaining the naming conventions the authors used for musical works, an apologetic of why to teach the classical composers, and notes on how to use the book, as well as caveats about what you might choose to avoid when studying certain classical composers. The layout of the lessons is fairly standardized. There is a reading selection followed by reproducible note-taking pages that your student can fill in, either while doing the reading, or while listening as you read aloud. There are timeline and mapwork activities (reproducible map and timeline pages and instructions), as well as composer summary cards to aid in review. The maps and forms for the composer cards would work well for notebooking as well, and directions for making a folderbook are included. Additional learning activities include games and coloring pages. The weekly lessons are designed to be completed in three sessions of about fifteen to thirty minutes each, though you can do more if a composer's story and music appeal to your student's imagination.

Resources include a bibliography for further reading, and listening suggestions along with websites where the composers' works can be found. In addition, there are complete answer keys for the note-taking sheets and filled-in, color-coded timeline reference pages, plus a glossary of musical terms and a certificate of completion ready to fill in when you finish the course.

At the end of your yearlong music appreciation study, you and your students should have a new familiarity and enjoyment of a long tradition of fine music, indeed, of music that has stood the test of time.