Anoth­er suc­cess­ful entry in this series of short biogra­phies for the ele­men­tary upper grades — the pub­lish­er grades it as for ages 9 – 12 — joins ear­li­er vol­umes about musi­cians such as Scott Joplin, Duke Elling­ton, Fred­er­ic Chopin, George Gersh­win, Bach, Beethoven, and oth­ers. A hand-me-down piano from Bernstein’s aunt changed his life in child­hood and set him up for con­flicts with his father, who want­ed Leonard, the old­est son, to go into the fam­i­ly busi­ness. He became an overnight sen­sa­tion when, at age 25 and with only a few hours notice, he con­duct­ed a con­cert that was broad­cast across the entire coun­try. His life was shaped by rela­tion­ships with famous con­duc­tors such as Dmitri Mitropou­los, Serge Kous­se­vitzky, and Fritz Rein­er, all of whom rec­og­nized his great tal­ent. An entire gen­er­a­tion of Amer­i­cans were lat­er intro­duced to seri­ous music through Bernstein’s com­po­si­tions for plays, films, and tele­vi­sion pro­grams. He was famous as a com­pos­er, a con­duc­tor, a pianist, and a teacher. 

At the begin­ning of each chap­ter is one page with his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion on an event going on in the world at the same time as the events in the biographee’s life. Exam­ples are the influen­za epi­dem­ic of 1918, the Berlin Wall and the estab­lish­ment of the State of Israel. The book is illus­trat­ed with pho­tographs at the begin­ning of each chapter. 

A sense both of Bernstein’s enor­mous con­tri­bu­tion to Amer­i­can cul­ture and the events in the world dur­ing his life­time are clear to the read­er. The series is visu­al­ly appeal­ing, inter­est­ing­ly writ­ten, and con­tains a lot of infor­ma­tion. The Jew­ish com­po­nent is strong in this par­tic­u­lar vol­ume, because of Bernstein’s Jew­ish upbring­ing and his con­nec­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty. Rec­om­mend­ed for chil­dren in grades 4 – 7.