Brundibar

Brundibar was a story I heard when I was pretty young; I had a music teacher in elementary school who thought it'd be a cool thing for us to learn as a Holocaust survivor was coming to speak to us around the same time.  Brundibar is a Czech children's opera written during the time of the Holocaust about two children who go to the town square to get some milk for their sick mother.  With the help of their animal friends, the manage to end the musical tyranny of Brundibar the accordion player (with very Nazi-esque evil tendencies) over the town square so they can sing and earn some money to buy the milk.  The wiki of the story is really good if you want to learn more about it.  Now as a college graduate with a degree in music education, this lesson has popped into my head on more than one occasion because I think it'd be a neat thing to teach my older students and tie into learning about the Holocaust and WWII in their main classroom some day.  What fortune that I should happen upon a copy of the adapted book by Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) in the delete rack while I was processing books to go to the book sale room!  The book was in lovely condition and $.50 for such a rad children's book is a steal!  I'm pretty jazzed about the find and will definitely find a way to use this in my classroom in the future.  ^-^