If it's too loud, you're too old

During the Thursday, June 21 Reading Rocks summer session, kids entered as readers and left as marchers. Valerie O'Connell read "Little Pig Joins the Band" to the six young musicians.

"Little Pig Joins the Band" is about Jacob, a pig trying to join a marching band. He attempts drums, tubas, trumpets and trombones but cannot play any because he is too small.

The kids thought about times when they were to small to do things like watch PG-13 movies, sort cows, drive a car and drive a car through a river.

Eventually, Jacob the pig, and the marching band, realize he is not too small to be their leader, so he marches out front, counting time with a baton.

The kids decided that if they were in a marching band, they would play tubas and trumpets. The violin was also a popular choice.

Instead of those instruments, they designed their own kazoos. The classic wind instruments were given structure by toilet paper rolls and reverberance by wax paper stretched over one end of the tube and held by a rubber band. Markers and stickers were used to personalize their Stradivarius kazoos.

The music was so wonderfully poised, harmonic and beautiful that O'Connell suggested they go outside and play. This was music to share, it was too... much to be kept in a small, enclosed space. This was shot down due to the kids' privacy concerns (as a man took pictures) and not wanting to hold hands.

The band played on inside, marching under a Lego arch and between bookcases as a couple accidental parade-goers put their hands to their ears to better concentrate on the marching.

After the music, and hope of retaining hearing to an old age, died, it was snack time.

The kids have had a week now to serenade their families with kazoo music and will be increasing their repertoire Thursday, June 28 after reading "I Know a Shy Fellow Who Swallowed a Cello" and making guitars.