Drawing on Dunleavy’s 20 years of experience conducting music workshops for children, this book takes a grass-roots approach – music kids can make themselves, without buying instruments or taking lessons. Homemade instruments, mostly different types of shakers and drums, are grouped into Marching, Skiffle, Trash, Carnival, and other bands. Encouraging readers to create their own sound-makers and play them with friends, Dunleavy uses charts and onomatopoeic syllables to suggest simple rhythms and combinations. She focuses on Caribbean, African, and American country traditions, with no discussion of Western classical or Asian music. Among the helpful notes on cultural context are a few slips, e.g., the misidentification of the South African group Ladysmith Black Mambazo as “Lady Blacksmith.”

Its emphasis on well-illustrated plans for making instruments makes the Jumbo Book of Music as much a crafts book as a music book. Most of the 50 intriguing instruments, such as rubber-hose bugle, clay-pot bells, and coffee-can steel drums, seem quite easy to construct. Some tricky ones, however, like the popsicle-stick thumb piano or the cornstalk fiddle, may prove frustrating. More musically useful are Dunleavy’s ideas for singing groups (“A Capella Jazz Band”), producing sounds with hands and feet (“Cool Body Jive”), and composing music and creating a score using dots, lines, or colours. Conventional music notation is not well served here; the brief verbal explanation needs a visual illustration of what such terms as “half note” and “staff” refer to, which would link with the notated melodies of the 29 songs. Song titles are indexed, and there is a glossary of musical terms.