Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz (Children's Literature)
The music of American composer Charles Ives is not easy to listen to or understand. In simple language, Gerstein helps make clear the many sources from which Ives drew inspiration, from the instruments played by his music teacher father to the sounds of everyday life in the country, such as birds, church bells, choirs, and marching bands. Ives grew up playing the piano and organ, listening to both popular and classical music. He went to college, married, worked for an insurance company, grew older, became ill. All this time he kept writing music, but was never able to have any performed. Eventually he gained some recognition, but as Gerstein notes, we must open our ears "to hear the...amazing music he heard." Gerstein takes on the challenge of visualizing sounds by flooding every page with the "bong" of bells, the "crack pow" of thunder, the "doodee deedee" of a marching band, and so forth. His scratchy-line colored drawings create characters and events, but it's the multi-hued, variously-sized and shaped letters that join in singing, playing, and blasting out sounds that tell the real story, helping us understand these compositions that are distinctly Ives but also express the American spirit. Notes add additional information. 2002, Frances Foster Books/Farrar Straus and Giroux, $17.00. Ages 4 to 9.

CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 2003)
Charles Ives was born with his ears wide open," begins Modicai Gerstein's rousing picture book biography of the singular American composer. The lively narrative is full of the sounds that Charlie heard from his infancy through his boyhood and adulthood to the final years of his life. The text incorporates a catalog of sounds on page after page as the story moves forward with energy and ease ("He heard his father's fiddle and the spring peepers. He heard church bells, fire truck bells, the ice cream's man's bell, and the train's bell and whistle."). The backdrop for the words on each two-page spread is Gerstein's exceptional artwork, in which a cacophony of sounds are incorporated into the images of Ives's life ("Ratattat," "Riinng!" "Whooooooosh"). When Ives's beloved father died, Gerstein writes, "Charlie heard a great silence." The page is silent, too-the absence of "noise" heightening children's understanding of the emotional impact of that event. Although Ives's music wasn't initially well-received, he lived long enough to see attitudes begin to change. Gerstein's volume is an invitation to young readers and listeners to open their ears to the world around them, and to Ives's music, too. Honor Book, CCBC Caldecott Award Discussion CCBC categories: Biography And Autobiography; Picture Books For Older Children; The Arts; Historical People, Places, And Events. 2002, Frances Foster Books / Farrar Straus Giroux, 40 pages, $17.00. Ages 5-9.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2002 (Vol. 70, No. 2))
A 20th-century composer whose music was so revolutionary that his contemporaries largely ignored him may seem an unlikely subject for a picture-book biography for children, but here Gerstein (I Am Arachne, 2001, etc.) manages to pull it off beautifully. Charles Ives, born in 1874 in Danbury, Connecticut, grows up hearing and learning to love noises of all sorts, from the music of his bandleader father to the ordinary sounds of the world around him: "Sometimes little Charlie lay in his crib just listening. He heard his mother's long dress as she moved around his room. He heard big clocks and little clocks. He heard wagons and horse hooves. He heard dogs and crickets and the church bell next door." As Charlie grows and begins writing music, the simple, direct text describes how he incorporates the sounds he hears into his music, slowly finding an audience in his old age. Delicate ink lines bristle with barely contained energy, while brilliant separations suffuse Charlie's world with color. But what makes this really work are the onomatopoetic renderings of what Charlie hears that fill virtually every page. Hand-lettered "bong, bong, bongs" vie for space with "clangs," "tweedles," and "kapows," all superimposed in color over the pictures to fill the reader's eyes with sound, just as Ives's compositions fill the ears with initially dissonant but ultimately exhilarating music. This vigorous and loving treatment begs to be read to musical accompaniment, and a brief biographical note at the end suggests some selections inspired by sounds depicted in the text. An unusual and joyful treatment of an unusual and joyful subject. 2002, Frances Foster/Farrar Straus & Giroux, $16.00. Category: Picture book/biography. Ages 4 to 8. Starred Review. © 2002 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ginny Moore Kruse (Parents Guide, Fall 2002 (Vol. 5, No. 1))
More than a century ago, Charles Ives was an imaginative child whose early curiosity and fascination with everyday sounds ultimately transformed him into a composer. Gerstein has successfully written about and pictured the creative process of this complex, nonconforming American musician as a boy and later as an adult who worked as an insurance salesman rather than have his music compromised by commercial expectations. His surprising compositions continue to astound listeners. 2002, Frances Foster Books/Farrar Straus and Giroux, $17. Ages 5 to 10.

Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, April 2002 (Vol. 55, No. 8))
Even today, the name of composer Charles Ives is hardly a household word, and his music has never really gained a wide popular audience. Gerstein’s compact introduction to the man may not change that, but it will give kids an insight both into recent music history and the creative life of a genuine American innovator. The book offers particular emphasis on the influence of Ives’ supportive father, himself a musician, and on Ives’ all-American small-town boyhood, where music and sports vied for his time and where he absorbed the sounds of America such as marching bands and tent-meeting hymn singers; it then goes on to discuss his nurturing marriage to the aptly named Harmony, the public puzzlement at his music, and the eventual recognition it received. The simple and understated text capably covers the key points of Ives’ life, but it’s the illustrations that really evoke the musician’s experience: the spreads are packed with onomatopoeic text floating through the air in various colors and textures, leaping out of Charlie’s head, and emanating from various natural sources, which makes the art thick with the sounds of daily life Charlie heard (and sometimes with the scornful reactions he encountered) and incorporated into his music. The result is sometimes jarring and almost overwhelming when weighed against Gerstein’s speedy yet delicate linework and mottled, sometimes iridescent hues, which is doubtless deliberate and absolutely fitting for Ives’ challenging music; these are full, jostling, and lively views rather than well-tamed and pretty ones. This might provoke some interesting discussions about artistic evocations as well as introducing kids to Ives’ music, and if youngsters want to respond with their own daily-sound cacophony, well, that’s probably the best tribute of all. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2002, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2002, Foster/Farrar, 40p, $17.00. Grades 2-4.

Horn Book (The Horn Book Guide, Fall 2002)
Composer Charles Ives was "born with his ears wide open" to melodies played by his music-teacher dad and to all other sounds in late-nineteenth-century Connecticut. The deftly sketched scenes are overlaid with the sounds that were Ives's inspiration--onomatopoetic words, like cheerful graffiti, are rhythmically repeated in vivid color. This is a thought-provoking picture book, an unusually creative synthesis of format, composition, and text. Category: Nonfiction-Biographies. 2002, Farrar/Foster, 40pp, $16.00. Ages 5 to 9. Rating: 1: Outstanding, noteworthy in style, content, and/or illustration.