Zoo Album Book

I was reading this book for the Goodreads Picture Book Club and I was extremely intrigued with this book! "The Philharmonic Gets Dressed" is a children's book by Karla Kuskin along with illustrations Marc Simont that details the preparation that the members of the Philharmonic Orchestra must undergo to get ready for their encore! "The Philharmonic Gets Dressed" is a great book for children who love learning about the inner workings of an orchestra!

It is Friday night and ninety-two men and thirteen women are getting dressed to get ready for work. First, they all take baths and wash themselves, then they put on the black and white outfits and then they pack up their instruments, head on to the auditorium and begin to play!

I truly enjoyed this book because it explained so much about what the musicians of the orchestra have to go through to prepare themselves for the orchestra performance. I loved the way that Karla Kuskin made this book extremely informative by just basically detailing what each member of the orchestra dresses up in to get ready for their performance and what really interested me about the uniforms that each member wears is how much attention is paid to the conductor as he dresses up for the performance. I loved how Karla Kuskin gave so much detail on what the conductor wears for his uniform such as having wavy black hair with a white lightning streak and having a very soft white shirt with ruffles down the front with special cuffs. Another aspect of this book that I really loved was Marc Simont's illustrations as they are extremely cute and I really loved seeing all the members getting dressed up for the orchestra since I was always interested in seeing what their outfits would look like for the orchestra and it is interesting to see that the members of the orchestra mainly wears black and white outfits rather than colorful outfits for a performance. Now, some parents might complain about the members of the orchestra undressing and bathing themselves, but personally, this does not bother me since it was done in a non-sexual way.

Parents should know that this book might be a bit too lengthy for smaller children to go through, which is why I gave it a four star rating instead of a five star rating because it was a bit long to read through. Even though it would be interesting to children to see how the members of the orchestra dress up, most smaller children might become bored with the length of this book. Parents might want to save one half of the book for the next day to keep the child's interest going.

Overall, "The Philharmonic Gets Dressed" is a great book in detailing the preparation phrase of getting dressed for a performance in the orchestra and what kinds of outfits each member dresses in for the orchestra. I would recommend this book to children ages five and up since the book might be a bit too long for smaller children.