What Music!, Lawlor

In a tall, narrow building on a wide avenue
pianos plinked and plunked day and night.
Everyone in quiet Augsburg knew the Stein home.
What music!

In 1787, aspiring yet unknown composer Ludwig van Beethoven arrives at young Nannette Stein’s home. What follows is a decades-long friendship that persists whether life hits a low or high note. Acclaimed nonfiction writer Laurie Lawlor deftly depicts how these two fascinating friends — a composer with hearing loss and a woman who became an innovative piano maker in a time that discouraged female entrepreneurship — fought the odds and worked together in perfect harmony.

Laurie Lawlor is a prolific and celebrated author of children's books. Her picture book biography Rachel Carson and her Book That Changed the World was named a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year and a National Science Teachers Association Outstanding Science Trade Book and received the John Burroughs Riverby Award. Her Super Women: Six Scientists Who Changed the World was named a NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Book. She lives and teaches in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Becca Stadtlander is an award-winning illustrator and fine artist. She won the Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration for Made By Hand: A Craft Sampler. She also illustrated On the Wing by David Elliott, which received two starred reviews as well as a Golden Kite Award. She attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and currently lives and works in her hometown of Covington, Kentucky.

Author: Laurie Lawlor
Illustrator: Becca Stadtlander
Format: Hardcover, 40 pages
Publisher: Holiday House (2023)
ISBN: 9780823451432
Recommended Age: 6-9 years