Dancing Hands

Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, by Margarita Engle (Author), Rafael López (Illustrator), published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2019.

Themes/Topics: Music, Immigration,

Opening: When Teresa was a little girl  in Venezuela, Mama sang lullabies

while Papa showed Teresita how to let her happy hands dance across all the beautiful

dark and light keys of a piano.

Brief Synopsis (from Amazon): As a little girl, Teresa Carreño loved to let her hands dance across the beautiful keys of the piano. If she felt sad, music cheered her up, and when she was happy, the piano helped her share that joy. Soon she was writing her own songs and performing in grand cathedrals. Then a revolution in Venezuela forced her family to flee to the United States. Teresa felt lonely in this unfamiliar place, where few of the people she met spoke Spanish. Worst of all, there was fighting in her new home, too—the Civil War.

Still, Teresa kept playing, and soon she grew famous as the talented Piano Girl who could play anything from a folk song to a sonata. So famous, in fact, that President Abraham Lincoln wanted her to play at the White House! Yet with the country torn apart by war, could Teresa’s music bring comfort to those who needed it most?

Why I Like This Book: Beautiful and lyric text and complemented by lovely illustrations tell the story of a girl who used her gift of music to uplift.

Links To Resources:

—Teresa Carreño article on Wikipedia

—Teresa Carreño : "by the grace of God" by Marta Milinowski, 1940 biography