Music Legends

Music Legends is an excellent compilation of musicians who have left their mark on pop/rock history, from The Beatles to Wu-Tang Clan! The graphic design has a clean and modern layout with a brief artist history, music genre, and selected discography or important dates.
This is a perfect introduction for young readers interested in pop/rock music and its history!
Thanks to Quarto Publishing Group/Wide Eyed Editions and NetGalley for providing an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I love these book series. Really fun and easy way to get children exposed to information that will last for a lifetime.
This book is again same structure and design like the other books in the series and explores 40 famous music icons and their lives / stories.
Fantastic little book, highly recommended for reading kids.

This is a nice collection of artists through the years that incorporates graphics, timelines, discography, and trivia into the text summary of each band / artist. It's interesting to see just how much pop music has changed over the decades. I felt that a few of the pictures were too 'racy,' including facets that just weren't necessary for the picture and that I know I'll have to discuss with the class when they draw attention to them. As an accompaniment to the "Who Were" books (eg, Who Were the Beatles?), this will be the spine of a course for high interest / low level students.

Great variety of music legends included with wonderful information. The graphics are great and the design is perfect -- everything makes this book a great source.

I have been having my children summer read these books! So far they have loved everyone one of them. I t is nice to see them read outside their usual comfort zone!

Music Legends: Meet 40 Pop and Rock Stars, by Herve Guilleminot is a children's non-fiction book.

As the title indicates, this book is focused on forty music stars throughout history, including Elvis Presley, The Doors, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Jim Hendrix, Madonna, Beyonce, Michael Jackson, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. Readers will learn interesting details and statistics about each rock star and pop legend.

Music Legends is geared toward young children, particularly elementary school students in second to fifth grades.


Note: I received this book from NetGalley, which is a program designed for bloggers to write book reviews in exchange for books, yet the opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Visual and factual masterpiece! I am compelled to read every book in this new series! Wide Eyed Editions is one of best imprints for kids nonfiction.

My ex worked in the music industry, and we got to meet a lot of stars, but not the very top musical cats featured in MUSIC LEGENDS. This cool book gives the 411 on 40 pop and rock stars through bios, sweet illustrations, and pull-out boxes with statistics. Now, I feel I’ve gone backstage and met Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Madonna, Beyoncé, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie and so many more. Highly recommended!

Grateful to the Quarto Publishing Group - Wide Eyed Editions and NetGalley for the early copy, in exchange for my true review.

#MusicLegends #NetGalley

The history of music in 40 inspiring portraits, including Elvis, The Beatles, Madonna, David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. The focus is too much on the 1960s - do any member of the young audience have any interest in The Who? - until the 1990s and does not appeal too much to the contemporary readers. And probably those interested in such bands will not be too much into such children books. But we are talking about 'legends' anyway so the choice of the topic is in itself restrictive.
The information is well presented and in an informative way, with relevant career benchmarks at the end of each short chapter. Recommended to little music lovers interested to dive more into the recent musical past.

This is an appealing and informative resource for kids who would like to know more about popular and significant musicians and/or groups. The book begins with Elvis and goes on to the Beatles, the Who, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, U2, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan and many others; there are 40 stories in all. The book is beautifully laid out with two pages per music legend. Illustrations are lively and really catch the look and flavor of each musician's personality. There are some dates, important facts and interesting trivia. Adults can also enjoy this look at the music that shaped the world when they were growing up. Highly recommended for popular music aficionados!

Nice intros to our favorite icons on music! I think it will be of interest to kids 4th grade to 8th grade who are interested in who there grandparents listened to way back in the day! Chapters are short and easy to read. Lots of info, but not enough to overwhelm. it was a fun read for me too as an adult! I grew up listening to these bands; they played the music that highlighted my life! Nothing like good old rock music! Kudos to the author of bringing it to the kids!

Hervé Guilleminot has been passionate about music since the age when he tapped on the family piano. He grew up to become a musical journalist and author of books devoted to pop and rock music. He has written books on the Beatles, Bjork, AC / DC, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley and U2. Even though my music taste is very eclectic, I tend to listen to a great many artists that are fairly unknown to those that aren't hardcore lovers of certain obscure genres. That being said, I am intrigued by the icons we tend to worship unconditionally and so this book sounded intriguing to me.

"Music Legends" is an informative compilation of 40 different people or groups targeted towards the childrens non-fiction market. For each particular icon there are illustrations, a short biography and other information such as statistics, all produced in an accessible and fun format for both adults and children to enjoy. The book imparts information on a wide variety of musicians from Elvis to The Beatles, Madonna to The Rolling Stones. There is lots of trivia throughout but it never feels as though the amount is overwhelming - it's a fine balance but one that the author has managed competently. The graphics are incredibly eye-catching too and really complement the information we are given.

I love this series and will be looking out for more of them in the future! Brilliant - recommended for adults who are interested in the music industry and the absolute greats and for young children who will find it an engaging experience just as I did.

Many thanks to Quarto Publishing Group/Wide Eyed Editions for an ARC. I was not required to post a review and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

This book was neat. It was cleanly organized and laid out, and was very easy to follow. The illustrations were fun, and the pages were very informative. This is a cool book for music lovers looking to discover great music, or to learn things about artists they already love.

A really enjoyable hour or so was taken up reliving the past and indeed learning new things about 40 music legends starting with Elvis Presley and then covering 39 other well known and for me anyway some so not so well known artists. Most of the big names are covered from the last 60 years or so including Bob Dylan, The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, Jim Hendrix, Queen, David Bowie, Abba, Madonna, Beyonce, Michael Jackson, U2 and many more.

With interesting facts, trivia, statistics and a categorisation of their musical styles this will enable children to gain a basic understanding and be an introduction to the world of the different popular music genres and its artists leading them to perhaps further reading.

The graphics are very good and the way the pages are set out makes it easy to take in the available information. This is certainly an eclectic selection and we have representatives from everything from pop to hard rock from new wave to punk. Even if you are not the targeted children audience I think that you may well find this a rather fun read.

So on that note, I thought I'd review something fun but easy to read to get back into this whole reading and review writing thing that I've been gone from for a few weeks now.

I love me some music - especially the old stuff. I'm talking here from the 40s to 90s - that really hits the sweet spot for me. So a book about music icons? Hell yes I was interested. Especially since my main man Bowie was on the cover.

This book is about all the artists that hit the scene and wowed the world with their new vocals, use of instruments and never-before gelled together genres.

The book begins by giving a timeline of important musicians. I think this is a fantastic book to get kids set on the road of real music.

For each important music, we get an awesome set of information - a small bio, some fun facts, date of birth and death and the reasons why these Rock n Roll hall of famers became so popular and well-loved in the first place.

My main man, Ziggy Stardust - the White Duke - the one and only David Bowie is featured in this book, so it definitely bumped my ratings.

I really enjoyed the simplistic art style used to illustrate the most integral parts of the bands and their influence. I learnt so much from this book and I love just about every legend in it.

All in all, this is a pretty informative read although I think it focused more on the rock scene than any other genres - I would have liked to see some Nat King Cole, Gorillaz, Beethoven etc. for diversity of genre. I feel like these are massive music legends.

The 40 Inspiring Icons series from Quarto’s Wide Eyed Editions is a collection of books that introduce 40 people or groups who are famous in their field through short biographies. The current range includes Music Legends, Soccer Stars, People of Peace, and Greek Gods & Heroes.

Each of the four books in the 40 Inspiring Icons series so far begins with a short introduction before launching into the bios which are presented in roughly chronological order. Every bio is spread over two pages and includes a stylized cartoon of the person or group, a one-paragraph introduction to them and what they’ve done to earn a place in the book, and a handful of extra interesting facts, figures, dates, or other relevant information. Each one is very much an introduction to the person or group and is designed with kids in mind so the books work hard to keep it simple, don’t expect to read a detailed history here and fans won’t learn anything new.

Music Legends
My favorite of the four 40 Inspiring Icons books so far was Music Legends which introduced 40 groups and singers from the 1950s to today. The book contains many of the artists you would expect to find in its pages, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, but there are many who were perhaps more unexpected such as New Order and The Velvet Underground. By far the strangest inclusion was Arcade Fire who, at least in my opinion, haven’t earned the title of “legend” yet – certainly not when the likes of Metallica and Guns N Roses have been excluded. Opinion is a really key word here because this book is bound to provoke outrage over the artists it has included over those it has not. There’s a definite lean toward British indie bands here too, perfect for me, but likely to upset fans of pop, hip-hop, and other genres.

I also found it odd that in several group illustrations, band members were left out with no explanation. Queen’s illustration only includes two of the four members, as does the image of Depeche Mode, while Radiohead’s illustration depicts three of their total five – yet other bands are depicted in their entirety with eight people are squeezed into the image of the Wu-Tang Clan so this clearly isn’t an issue of space. A band line-up is rarely included in the facts which means that these missing group members are never even referred to by name, they are simply ignored. If you can let this slide, however, this is a fun introduction to many classic music artists that will prompt discussion and, hopefully, inspire you to listen to new music with your kids.

People of Peace
The next 40 Inspiring Icons title – People of Peace – introduces protestors, artists, philosophers, scientists, politicians, and more who have worked to make our world a more peaceful place. Of the four books, this is easily the one most likely to inspire deep, thought-provoking conversations and is a great reference to have around for homework or further reading after watching the news. Again, the line-up contains many faces you would expect to see such as Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, but there were also many names I didn’t know and many more who I did know but for other reasons, not their commitment to peace – such as Pablo Picasso and Victor Hugo.

One of my criticisms of this book comes from the assumptions it makes regarding prior knowledge. This is very much a primer for kids, yet things like the House Un-American Activities Committee are referenced with no explanation of what they were/are. You could take this as an opportunity to dig deeper and continue learning elsewhere, but in a kids primer, I believe it would be best to keep it simple and include clear explanations of anything mentioned in passing like this.

I found this book the most educational of the bunch and it made me want to go away and learn more about the people it introduced which is all you can really hope for from a book like this.

Soccer Stars
The first 40 Inspiring Icons book I actually read was Soccer Stars (titled Fantastic Footballers outside the US). I am not a football fan beyond supporting my country, but England had been performing well in the 2018 World Cup and I was riding a high which inspired me to pick it up. The book features players from every continent as well as a handful of female players which I was really pleased to see considering how easy it would have been for the authors to ignore the women’s game entirely.

Anyone familiar with the beautiful game, even in passing, will know many of the players here – Beckham, Ronaldo, Messi, and Pele are household names the world over. However, I asked my husband, a far bigger soccer fan than me, to look over the contents page which lists all the bios included in the book and he believes that Soccer Stars is likely to be even more controversial than Music Legends for who it excludes and some of the lesser players who have taken their place. He pointed out the inclusion of Paul Pogba over Thierry Henry from France or Marco Veratti over Roberto Baggio from Italy as particularly odd choices. This has possibly been done partly to balance the names out so someone is included from every continent, despite the vast majority of internationally renowned players hailing from Europe and South America.

Again, this book is designed as an introductory primer so the bios are short and cannot possibly include everything there is to know about a player – especially those with long careers or those who have done other things of note away from the pitch. Yet it does a good job of giving you a flavor of who these people are and why they have become as well-known as they are.

Greek Gods and Heroes
The final title so far – Greek Gods and Heroes – is possibly the oddest inclusion to the 40 Inspiring Icons series because it is the only one of the four to focus on fictional people over real ones. The bizarre nature of Greek mythology also means it’s the hardest to wrap your head around thanks to the endless inbreeding and confused relationships, with Zeus alone responsible for a large proportion of the mess. The book does attempt to present itself in chronological order moving down the Olympian family tree, but when people are frequently having children with their own parents, the issue does become slightly confused!

Most adults will have heard of the majority of the figures in this book – Zeus, Apollo, Medusa, and Achilles for example, but there are several lesser-known figures included here as well such as Asclepius, Tantalus, and Iphigenia. And while most of us are probably aware of these figures and have a vague recollection of what they did (Jason with his Argonauts, Achilles and his heel), we’re perhaps not as familiar with the details of their stories. I found myself shocked at just how twisted many of the tales were, despite having a general familiarity with Greek mythology. This is one book I would recommend reading along with or before your kids because some of the contents could be upsetting to those with a more sensitive disposition.

As with People of Peace, I also found that this book would introduce something without explaining it in enough detail, or would hint at things and never explain them in full. A specific example can be found in the Dionysus bio. It tells us how Hera (Dionysus’s step-mother of a sort) spent years attempting to kill Dionysus and to drive him mad, yet a note in his family tree shows that he and Hera had a child together. How on Earth did that happen? No explanation is included…

40 Inspiring Icons Series
I really loved the 40 Inspiring Icons book series and am excited to see more of them in the future as the scope for potential topics is enormous. While all four could use a little editorial clean-up and there are issues over who is included and who isn’t, they work great as introductions or quick reminders in their subject areas and I would highly recommend all four.

GeekMom received these books for review purposes.