The Sound Books series is a picture book collection designed to visually represent musical concepts for young learners. Its original artwork is created and arranged to clearly depict sound ideas with few or no words required. The unique approach encourages students to bring together visual and aural imagery and creativity in an exploration of vocal and instrumental skill building and conceptual musical understanding. Designed for interactive use between parents and children, teachers and students, each book focuses on a particular skill and/or concept area and provides strategies for effective use. Grouping Sound is the fifth publication in the series and focuses on musical meter - the ways in which we organize strong and weak beats within musical compositions. Through straightforward and compelling visual images that depict bigger and smaller sounds in organized collections, both common and less common musical meters are introduced. Learners are encouraged to use their voices, instruments, bodies, and found sounds to create and combine the beat patterns to develop a wide range of metrical possibilities and expertise.
Ryan, Charlene A.: - Charlene A. Ryan is a musician, painter, writer, and mom. She has spent most of her life behind an instrument and in front of an audience of one kind or another. Dr. Ryan, as she is known by many, is also a professor of music education whose career centers around young musicians and their teachers. Currently an Associate Professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, Charlene has been in higher education for almost 20 years, with previous positions at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and McGill University in Montreal. Before this, she was a school music teacher who worked with children of all ages, from infants to highschoolers. While teaching at McGill and Berklee, she continued to engage with children through various community outreach programs in Montreal and Boston, such as the Little Musicians/Very Little Musicians program (Montreal) and KidsJam/BabyJam series (Boston). Research into the performance experiences and anxieties of children and adolescents has played a central role in her academic life. Charlene's work has been published widely in academic journals such as Psychology of Music, Journal of Research in Music Education, International Journal of Stress Management, and International Journal of Music Education, and she serves on editorial boards for the International Journal of Music Education and Frontiers in Psychology-Performance Science. Charlene's research, teaching, and performing experiences combined to provide the impetus for her children's books, Hannabelle's Butterflies and The Milk Crate Club (forthcoming), and her middle grade book, Katherine Lost, which center about the joys and challenges experienced by young musicians. Her first book, Building Strong Music Programs: A Handbook for Preservice and Novice Music Teachers (NAfME/RLE) is used in teacher education programs across North America and was recognized as an Outstanding Academic Title by the Association of College and Research Libraries. As editor of the Canadian Music Educator, Charlene continues to play an important role in supporting teachers in their development of outstanding programs for children and adolescents.
