MAKING MUSIC

Kids can always bang on pots and pans, or pluck on rubber bands to make noise. This book takes homemade music a step further, with instructions for making musical instruments out of household items. Among the projects is the familiar balloon-coffee can drum, a xylophone made of wrenches strung together in a ladder, a hose and funnel trumpet, and a bull roarer made with a wooden soon. The instruments are easy to make, and the text notes when adult help is necessary. Clear, helpful instructions carefully show children of many races making music. The instruments are basically noisemakers and the tones they make somewhat arbitrary; this isn't a manual to help one construct a well-tuned, cigar-box Steinway. Genial fare, although Ann Wiseman's Making Musical Things (Macmillan, 1979) offers more possibilities, for slightly older readers, than the creations shown here. (Picture book/nonfiction. 5-9)