Books like Mole Music
By David McPhail
For the kid who practices something quietly, over and over, just because it matters to them — this is a story that says that devotion counts, even unseen. Quiet, reflective, and gently profound — more meditation than adventure.
A spider artist longs to spin beautiful webs and one true masterpiece, but is shooed from room to room of Beekman's Boardinghouse until she finally finds a home that welcomes her gift.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A true story about a young inventor who builds his own microphone from a broomstick, a cinderblock, and a telephone, then goes on to engineer the world's first solid-body electric guitar.
A biography of jazz pioneer Duke Ellington, tracing his rise from playing pool halls and cabarets as a teenager to leading his orchestra through a groundbreaking Carnegie Hall performance of Black, Brown, and Beige.
A quiet, piano-loving boy — the son of a man once enslaved — grows up to compose music so joyful and rhythmic it earns him a new name: the King of Ragtime.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
A Victorian artist named Waterhouse Hawkins sets out to show the world what dinosaurs looked like by building the first life-size dinosaur models, first in England, then in New York City.
A musical girl from small-town North Carolina, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, grows into the singer Nina Simone — her sweet voice rising into a thunderous roar of protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
A porcupine named Percy loves balloons more than anything, but his prickly quills keep popping them — so he sets out to find a clever way to finally keep one.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A girl named Alice Rumphius vows to travel the world, live by the sea, and find a way to make the world more beautiful — and spends her life keeping that promise.
