What Music!: The Fifty-year Friendship between Beethoven and Nannette Streicher, Who Built His Pianos

By Laurie Lawlor
Illustrated by Becca Stadtlander

Strings quivered. Notes shimmered. Meet best friends acclaimed composer Ludwig van Beethoven and bold female entrepreneur Nannette Streicher in this lively and lyrical nonfiction picture book.

In a tall, narrow building on a wide avenue
pianos plinked and plunked day and night.
Everyone in quiet Augsburg knew the Stein home.
What music!

In 1787, aspiring yet unknown composer Ludwig van Beethoven arrives at young Nannette Stein’s home. What follows is a decades-long friendship that persists whether life hits a low or high note. Acclaimed nonfiction writer Laurie Lawlor deftly depicts how these two fascinating friends—a composer with hearing loss and a woman who became an innovative piano maker in a time that discouraged female entrepreneurship—fought the odds and worked together in perfect harmony. 

Hardcover
40 pages 
Age range: 6-9
Holiday House, 2024
8.33 x 0.34 x 10.27 inches
ISBN 9780823451432    
Children's Books, Biography