Charlie Ives grew up surrounded by music and sounds. Anything he heard, he would try to fit it into a piece of music, which some considered clatter. It was not until he was 77, that his music was finally recognized and appreciated. I loved the illustrations in this book. Gerstein took the typical scenes being portrayed and overlaid them with the sounds that Charlie would hear. I thought the book was well done and told an inspiring story about how music can be found in anything. ( )

I learned about Charles Ives in a music class I took, but did not know all this information about him. I heard his music before and I loved it. Charlie wrote music his entire life but it was not published until he was very old and becoming ill. I love the illustrations throughout the book. The illustration are bright, colorful and contain musical words that capture what each page of the book is about. When Charlie is happy the page is filled with color, and music words, such as bang, boom and ring. Also when Charlie is upset the page is dark and silent ( )

What Charlie Heard is the unique yet true story of Charles Ives, or Charlie, who makes music based on what he hears, whether it’s church bells, cheers of a crowd, thunder, or a bat hitting a ball. During Charlie’s journey of making music, his father, who played a major role in his love for music, passes away. The author and illustrator do an incredible job of depicting the emotions when Charlie’s father passed away. In relation to the other illustrations, some are breath taking, such as the image of the sunset with the Charlie on the train. However, some of the other illustrations are very busy and abound with onomatopoeias, which to me, doesn’t make his music sound very pleasant. Despite criticism from many, Charlie perseveres and becomes a successful composer. Although, I find it difficult to relate to Charlie’s music, the story encourages those to own their differences and be true to who you are. ( )

Young Charlie is a boy who always listened to all the sound around him and tried to re-created them as he started writing music. Any sound around him such as a cheering, crowd or brass and parading through the town on the fourth of July, wagons and horse hooves, weren’t just a noisy sound for him. This book focuses on Lves’ father as an inspiration. Lves’s father was a music teacher and the leader of the town’s brass band. His father encouraged him to re-create in music the sound that he heard every day. The book also focused on the difficulties lves had getting people to accept and love his new style of music. The author used a great drafted illustrations show how the many sound combined in Charlies brain to form his own unique music. Gerstein wrote each sound of different resources in different colored typeface,such as the drum sound "Bong, Bong, Bong," and trumpets sound “ ta ta ta ting” which could make children almost hear the sounds of Lves’s life. This book can be an excellent choice for libraries to have a different kind of music collection. Children can learn from this book that Charlie did not allow the criticism or public contempt to keep him from composing the music he that loved, and Finally he achieved his dream and received a Pulitzer prize and became a famous. ( )

The biography of Charles Ives is presented in a unique format. The pictures included by the author have lots of sounds so the reader can hear the music that Charlie heard. The author begins the book when Charles Ives is a baby and hears sounds all around him. You learn Charlie's father is a musician that passed his love of music to his son. Charles Ives was a young boy when he started playing musical instruments like his father. He and his father had a different ear for music. His father had two bands march around two in opposite directions playing different tunes to hear how it sounded. The father and son both thought it was an interesting sound. Charlie began to make his own unique music and was met with mixed emotion from others. Some people did not like his music at all and it was not fully appreciated for many years. The author did not isolate this biography to Charles Ives' love of music but included some of his personal life, including some information on his wife, Harmony. The color included in the book allowed the reader to feel some of the emotion since there were cheerful beautiful colors during the peaks of Charlie's life and dull colors during the valleys.
The "sounds" included in many of the photos seem to be distracting to me. I felt like I may be just like the people that do not understand Charlie's music. I do not feel like I would like his style based on reading this book. ( )