Customer Reviews

The Barefoot Book of Stories from the Opera

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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My children, ages 5 and 2, and I, a musician mom, love this book. The pictures are colorful and beautiful. The first page of each story is a picture of all the main opera characters with their names underneath, so the children can refer to this page if the story begins to confuse them. This is followed by a synopsis of the opera, a blurb about the composer and then the opera itself. The text is simply magnificent. The stories are interesting all on their own, and even if you don't like opera you will love this book.

This book would be a good choice for introducing children to the stories from operas. The author does a nice job of retelling in simple terms, the often-time complicated stories from seven different "child-friendly" operas. Some of the stories will be new to children and are sure to hold their interest. A couple of the operas are based on fairy-tales the children already know and they will be interested to see the differences in these versions. My only complaint was that I did not feel that the illustrations lived up to the same high quality as the stories.