Kate DeMonica: Clatter Bash! A Day of the Dead Celebration"

“Clatter Bash! A Day of the Dead Celebration” by Richard Keep is able a Mexican family that has set offerings in a graveyard so that their loved ones can return for a night. The skeletons rise and celebrate. Throughout the story, they sing, dance, eat, and play games. At the end of the night they return to their coffins. This story is useful in a music classroom because the only words in it are onomatopoeia. This helps children associate different sounds with what material the sound is coming for. This book introduces scatting as a way to communicate rhythm and rhyme when singing occurs.  Scatting can teach students to make the connection of hearing a sound and then producing the noise back in response. This can be thought of as beginning aural skills.