88 Instruments is short and sweet and covers a lot of different instruments! The book, written by Chris Barton and illustrated by Louis Thomas, follows a kid on a trip to a music store. His mom and dad say he gets to pick one instrument — and only one. It’s a really tough choice! Should he pick the squeeziest? The wheeziest? He goes through a lot of words that aren’t real words and rhyme with “est.” I liked this part the best 🙂 I kept asking mom and dad to read that again, or say that again. I just liked hearing them say funny words.
The book is beautiful. It’s filled with watercolor illustrations of instruments though my favorite was a close up illustration of the boy. Mom says he looked a specific way because he was feeling overwhelmed, like the choices were too much, and the things he needed to learn were too many, so he felt a little out of sorts. And then, as I turned the page and he played with the instrument a little more, he says he’ll just have to learn that instrument one note at a time. That made a lot of sense to me. I think that was mom’s favorite part. She’s a writer and she mentioned a book she loves for grown ups called Bird by Bird.
My dad is a musician. He plays clarinet and he loves it when I read books about music. He recently bought a piano because he wants me to grow up with a piano in the house, so he was super happy with the timing of this book. I’m not sure yet which instrument I’ll play. There are many woodwind instruments in our home — those are like wooden instruments that you blow into. We also have drums, cymbals, and many, many, many recorders. Do you know what instrument you might like to play? Tell me here!
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DOWNLOAD FREE PRINTABLES
Piano Coloring Page — Print this piano coloring page and have fun with crayons while you learn some notes!
Sorting by Size Worksheet – Put guitars in order from shortest to tallest with this sorting by size worksheet.
String Instruments List — Learn the names of the instruments in the string family with this colorful string instruments handout for preschoolers.
HOW TO MAKE A PIANO USING SIDEWALK CHALK – Find some chalk and your grown up, then head outside to play with a DIY humongous piano!
LETTER P ACTIVITIES FOR PRESCHOOL – Make a piano out of paper with this DIY piano craft / letter P craft!
PLUS activities from the author of 88 Instruments! Chris Barton has an AMAZING 88 Instruments activities pdf that’s free! Get it here.
TALKING POINTS FOR 88 INSTRUMENTS BOOK:
• What was your favorite part of 88 Instruments?
• Did you like the instrument the boy selected? What would you have chosen?
• Do you remember a time when you had to focus and learn something new? What did you have to learn?
• Was it scary because it was new?
• What did you do to get past the scared feeling? If you didn’t find it scary, how did it feel to you?
• What steps did you take to get started?
• Have you ever felt like something new was a little too much? Tell me about it!
• Did you come up with little things you would do in order to learn bit by bit?
• Is there an instrument you want to play? Which one? Why that instrument?
• After reading this book, has your instrument choice changed?
• Is there anything that you didn’t understand in this book?
• Is there anything specific about this 88 Instruments book you’d like to talk about?
USEFUL INFO FOR GROWNUPS
• Book: 88 Instruments
• Written by: Chris Barton
• Illustrated by: Louis Thomas
• Age Range: 3 to 7
• Illustrated edition: 32 pages
• Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers; (August 16, 2016)
• ISBN-13 : 978-0553538144
