Press the page and a whole forest of animals plays Mozart. Five pieces live inside these ten board pages, one per spread: the fourth horn concerto opens it in an autumn wood, symphony no. 25 plays under falling snow, and the overture to The Marriage of Figaro drifts down a river full of otters. Real Mozart, at exactly the length a small child will sit still for.

Every spread is crowded with things to find. A hedgehog conducts from a tree stump, badgers play clarinet, rabbits saw at cellos taller than they are, and a crowd of mice in scarves dances on a toadstool. The speech bubbles tell Mozart's life one line at a time, that he started making up music at five and wrote a symphony at seventeen, so the book keeps growing with the child, from first sounds to first facts.

It is the companion to The Animal Orchestra Plays Beethoven, and the two sit together on a nursery shelf as a matched pair. A first birthday, a baby shower, a long afternoon indoors: it earns its place every time that button gets pressed.

The Animal Orchestra Plays Beethoven