The Round Book: Rounds Kids Love to Sing

Recognized as Bowker Best Books for Young Children & Winner of Storytelling World Honor

This handy paperback presents 80 songs designed to be sung as rounds. Each one appears on an uncluttered page or two, illustrated by a simple ink drawing. From sixteenth-century tunes to contemporary camp songs, the selection is rich and varied, and the appended bibliography, "More Rounds for the Avid Singer," suggests other books and recordings. Song leaders will find the clearly written suggestions for round singing particularly helpful. A fine resource for school music teachers, choir directors, camp leaders, and children who sing for the love of it. 

School Library Journal wrote, "The selections are written in such a way that the staves are connected and numbered to denote each part...MacDonald’s more sophisticated book seems geared to adults who would be leading the singing. Somewhat static black-and-white drawings open up each chapter. Overall, the introduction and instructions on singing rounds plus the appended history, advice for directors, additional suggestions of rounds, and a title/first-line index help to make this offering useful for most collections."

Margaret Read MacDonald Bio: 

Margaret Read MacDonald is a professional storyteller, award winning author and highly respected consultant who travels the world telling stories and conducting workshops for educators. Her most popular workshop “Playing with Stories” has been offered in over 70 countries. She has been invited to storytelling and literary festivals in Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore. In addition, Dr. MacDonald teaches storytelling to classroom teachers for the Lesley University Creative Education through the Arts program. For years, she also taught storytelling as an Adjunct Professor with the University of Washington Information School. 

Dr. MacDonald is the author of over 60 books on folklore and storytelling topics, including many award winning folktale picture books. She has been telling stories since 1964 in her work as a children’s librarian, and she holds a Ph.D. in Folklore from Indiana University along with an M.Ed.EC. (Educational Communications Masters) from the University of Hawaii and a Master’s of Library Science (MLS) from the University of Washington. She is well known for her ability to create texts that delight the ear and are easy for teachers to share. Teaching with Story contains 20 of these useful stories that can be used by teachers with their students.