Dancing Hands
How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln
Atheneum Books for Young Readers · Print & ebook · August 27, 2019
Winner of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book In soaring words and stunning illustrations, Margarita Engle and Rafael López tell the story of Teresa Carreño, a child prodigy who played piano for Abraham Lincoln.
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- Who it’s for
- A young pianist’s music meets displacement, language, and a country at war.
- Themes
- Music as emotional comfort, Family forced to flee Venezuela, Music amid the Civil War
- Genres
- Musicians' Lives for Kids, Hispanic & Latino Life (U.S.), Performers' Biographies for Kids
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Start with this bookAbout this book
Winner of the Pura Belpré Illustrator Award A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book In soaring words and stunning illustrations, Margarita Engle and Rafael López tell the story of Teresa Carreño, a child prodigy who played piano for Abraham Lincoln. As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy.
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Soon she was writing her own songs and performing in grand cathedrals. Then a revolution in Venezuela forced her family to flee to the United States. Teresa felt lonely in this unfamiliar place, where few of the people she met spoke Spanish. Worst of all, there was fighting in her new home, too—the Civil War. Still, Teresa kept playing, and soon she grew famous as the talented Piano Girl who could play anything from a folk song to a sonata. So famous, in fact, that President Abraham Lincoln wanted her to play at the White House! Yet with the country torn apart by war, could Teresa’s music bring comfort to those who needed it most?
Music Across Borders
A young pianist’s music meets displacement, language, and a country at war.
Come here for
- Music as a child’s language of joy and comfort
- A personal story against upheaval in Venezuela and Civil War-era America
Expect
- Soaring words and expressive illustrations
- Piano, cultural heritage, and history brought together
Where it sits
| Musicians' Lives for Kids | 72% |
|---|---|
| Hispanic & Latino Life (U.S.) | 39% |
| Performers' Biographies for Kids | 36% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Musicians' Lives for Kids
- Cultural Heritage Biographies for Kids
- Hispanic & Latino Life (U.S.)
- Authors
- Margarita Engle
- Publisher
- Atheneum Books for Young Readers
- Published
- August 27, 2019
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- Music as emotional comfort · Family forced to flee Venezuela · Music amid the Civil War
- Reading lane
- Musicians' Lives for Kids