Jake the Philharmonic Dog

Jake the Philharmonic Dog is a picture book that I really enjoyed. I would highly recommend this book because it has a variety of usages. First off, I thought the illustrations by Marcin Baranski were beautiful. The illustrations had so much detail. The page when Richie and Jake are in front of the concert hall looks like a painting that should be hung at an art museum. Another usage for this book could be to teach children about different instruments and meanings of musical definitions. I really like how they labeled the brass, percussion, and woodwind instruments because that is something kids can learn about while listening to the story. Also, at the end of the book their is a list of musical words used in the book that you can refer to with your students if they are unfamiliar with the term. The last thing I really liked about this story was how it portrayed music. It used music as a soothing factor, and that is how I use music in my life as well. There is a point in the book when Jake the dog hears thunder and is terrified of it. He is so scared that he does not even want to play fetch or eat a biscuit. Richie his owner thinks of a brilliant idea to turn his CD on of a symphony playing and the dog immediately calms down and sways to the music. This reminds me of when I was in the recovery room in the hospital after I had ACL surgery. When I finally woke up I could not stop crying from the pain in my knee, the nausea feeling, and the lady next to me who was throwing up from her nausea. The family tried everything to get me to stop crying and the only thing that helped was when they started to sing to me. I listened to their soothing voices and I was able to calm down. This book and experiences in my life support the idea that music has a lot of power.