Where are all the instruments? West Africa

Written by Nathan Holder and illustrated by Charity Russell, the Why books series introduces children to a range of different musical styles through stories populated with diverse characters. This latest volume explores the music of the various different countries of West Africa via a group of plucky schoolchildren who adventure from country to country collecting instruments as they go The concept draws on a long tradition of children's adventure writing - who doesn't like a story about kids who wander round the world totally unsupervised - and there are pleasing parallels with other books that children will be familiar with such as the Oxford Reading Tree series

The real value of this book is in the way it both gently encourages the reader to educate themselves about bigger issues - "But Africa's a continent" - and provides a detailed and authentic guide to instruments, including their specific country of origin and, crucially for music teachers, how to pronounce them! Easy to miss on the back cover is a QR code which takes you to examples of these instruments so that you can hear and see them being played, which really elevates this from an interesting children's book into a full package of support for exploring the music of West Africa in the classroom.

Of course, this book is aimed at children, and therefore this review would not be complete without a child's perspective, so I handed it over to my 9 year-old nephew for the final word:

"I enjoyed it because I learned about lots of different instruments. I liked the start because it was set in a music lesson"

Children and teachers alike will get a lot out of this book, and the other volumes in the series.