Music Dictionary Book

A straightforward and thorough introduction to understanding how to read the timing-related aspects of music. Due to the focus, the book did not cover the names of the notes, but it does cover time signatures, how much different kinds of notes are worth, different rests, and how to determine how many beats are in a measure. It did not get into more advanced things like Codas, accel., rit., etc. The subtitle comes from the emphasis of the book on comparing time signatures and fractions, and the worth of various notes to others. I liked that it had some "practice" pages for readers to test their understanding and guide them through the reading of the timing of a short song. I would've given the book a higher rating, but the text was VERY dry (but that could also be because all of this was pretty basic stuff for me). There were some side notes added that helped the dryness a little. I thought the graphics used were nice, as well as the handy vocabulary guide in the back. Unfortunately, though the book could be helpful to any beginning musician regardless of age, the font chosen screams, 'I was written for a little kid!' I still would recommend it to music teachers and beginning musicians of any age.