NEW YORK – The latest picture-book collaboration between Julie Andrews and daughter Emma Walton Hamilton was inspired by an offbeat musical performance in Spain.
Abrams Children’s Books announced Monday that The Enchanted Symphony will be released September 12. Andrews and Walton Hamilton were thinking of the book in the first year of the pandemic when they learned of “Concert for the Biocene,” which featured a string quartet playing in front of thousands of plants, one for each seat at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu.
According to Abrams, “The Enchanted Symphony” is a “hopeful fairy tale”. It is set in a village “possessed by a mysterious mist” but revived by “a boy’s simple melody”.
“While the fog in our book evokes our pandemic experience, it also symbolizes something larger: the insidious and myriad distractions that prevent us from appreciating what truly matters most in life,” Andrews and Walton Hamilton said in one Explanation.
“For us, it’s family, community, nature and the arts that offer true beauty and meaning,” they said.
Andrews and her daughter have collaborated on numerous other books, including The Very Fairy Princess series and The First Notes: The Story of Do, Re, Mi, based on the famous song from The Sound of Music. They are also planning a sequel to The Enchanted Symphony.
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