The Reading Warehouse

So begins this vivid biography about one of the most legendary prodigies in history. Award-winning author and illustrator Diane Stanley engagingly tells the story of a brilliant boy who grew up to be a complex and often troubled young man--a man who composed some of the most beautiful music of all time.

With stunning and expressive illustrations, she portrays Mozart's turbulent life as a marionette show, inspired by the famous Salzburg Marionette Theatre, using an innovative artistic approach to present the life of a renowned musical genius. In concise and lyrical prose, Stanley presents an honest and sympathetic portrait of the boyhood and tragically short adulthood of a composer whose music has lived on for more than two hundred years.

Diane Stanley is the author and illustrator of beloved books for young readers, including The Silver Bowl, which received three starred reviews, was named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews and Book Links Lasting Connections, and was an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice; The Cup and the Crown; Saving Sky, winner of the Arab American Museum's Arab American Book Award and a Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year; Bella at Midnight, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and an ALA Booklist Editors' Choice; The Mysterious Case of the Allbright Academy; The Mysterious Matter of I. M. Fine; and A Time Apart. Well known as the author and illustrator of award-winning picture-book biographies, she is the recipient of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children and the Washington Post-Children's Book Guild Nonfiction Award for her body of work.

Ms. Stanley has also written and illustrated numerous picture books, including three creatively reimagined fairy tales: The Giant and the Beanstalk, Goldie and the Three Bears, and Rumpelstiltskin's Daughter. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. dianestanleybooks.com.