Music book series in reading order

Daisy Meadows is the name on the Rainbow Magic children's books, a fantasy line whose subjects include fairies, goblins, Jack Frost and two girls, Kirsty Tate and Rachel Walker. The catalogue opens in 2003 with colour-fairy titles such as Ruby the Red Fairy, Amber the Orange Fairy and Fern the Green Fairy, and runs to Nur the Vlogger Fairy (2023). Sub-series include the Weather, Jewel, Party, Pet Keeper, Dance, Ocean and Showtime Fairies. Magic Animal Friends appears under the same name.

Hanif Abdurraqib

8 books• 2 series

Hanif Abdurraqib, born 1983, is an American poet, essayist and cultural critic. The essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2017) opens a catalogue of 8 books that reaches There's Always This Year in 2024. A Little Devil in America took the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, and Abdurraqib received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021. The poetry includes The Crown Ain't Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster. Subjects record music, African American intellectual life and race relations in the United States, filed under essays and literary collections.

Andrew Clements

83 books• 10 series

Andrew Clements (May 29, 1949 to November 28, 2019) was an American children's author. Frindle, the first Clements novel, won an award decided by the votes of schoolchildren in about 20 U.S. states, and received the 2016 Phoenix Award, given to a book that missed a major prize on first publication. The catalogue lists 83 books from Bird Adalbert (1985) to The Frindle Files (2024). Schools, teachers, friendship and dogs recur in the subjects. The Clements series include Benjamin Pratt and the Keepers of the School, Jake Drake, Pets to the Rescue and Real Monsters.

Michael Walsh writes about music and also writes thrillers. Nineteen books are catalogued from 1987 to 2025, beginning with Carnegie Hall (1987) and reaching A Rage to Conquer (2025). The listing separates Michael Walsh Non-Fiction, Michael Walsh Standalone Novels and the Devlin series, named for the recurring character Devlin. Recorded subjects include music, operas, composers, biography, humor, terrorism, the Second World War and Carnegie Hall itself. Walsh remains in print with new work.

Neil Gaiman

199 books• 41 series

Neil Gaiman, born Neil Richard Gaiman on 10 November 1960, is an English writer of short fiction, novels, comic books, audio theatre and screenplays. The Sandman comic series ran from 1989 to 1996, and the novels include Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Coraline (2002), Anansi Boys (2005) and The Graveyard Book (2008). The Graveyard Book made Gaiman the first author to win both the Newbery and Carnegie medals for one work, and other awards include the Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker. Gaiman co-created the television adaptations of Good Omens and The Sandman. The catalogue runs from Duran Duran (1984) to The Silver Age (2024) and includes Sandman and Death graphic novels and children's books.

Who HQ is the credit on 429 children's nonfiction biographies in the catalogue, published from 2002 to 2026. The run opens with Who Was Albert Einstein?, Who Was Amelia Earhart? and Who Was Ben Franklin? (all 2002) and reaches Who Is Vera Wang (2026). Subjects include biography, history and juvenile nonfiction for readers aged 8 to 12. Other names credited on some of the books include Megan Stine (7), John Hinderliter (7) and Nico Medina (4).

Michael Morpurgo

171 books• 5 series

Sir Michael Morpurgo, born 5 October 1943, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist best known for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). Morpurgo served as the third Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005 and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Recurring themes include outsiders who triumph, survival and bonds with nature, set in places such as the Cornish coast and the First World War trenches. The catalogue holds 171 books from It Never Rained (1974) to Down Burrow Lane (2026), including the Mudpuddle Farm series.

Anthony Burgess

63 books• 3 series

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) was an English novelist, screenwriter and composer. A Clockwork Orange (1962), a dystopian satire, is the novel he is known for, though Burgess wrote mainly comic fiction, the Enderby quartet and Earthly Powers among it, alongside the Malayan Trilogy that opens with Time for a Tiger (1956). Burgess also wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 television mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, reviewed for The Observer and The Guardian, and published studies of James Joyce. The catalogue holds 63 titles, reaching One Man's Chorus (1998).

Nancy Krulik writes for children, and the catalogue lists Grades 1-3 as the reading level. Series credited to Krulik include Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo, How I Survived Middle School, Magic Bone, Princess Pulverizer and Project Droid, and George Brown, Class Clown appears among the characters. Subjects range across magic, schools, friendship, dogs, robots and humorous stories. The most recent listed book is Fangs for Having Us! (2021), and the catalogue marks the output as dormant.

Kate McMullan, born Kate Hall on January 16, 1947, is an American children's author with more than 100 published books. Myth-O-Mania and Dragon Slayers' Academy are the notable McMullan series, and others include Fluffy the Classroom Guinea Pig, Pearl and Wagner and Lila Fenwick. Greek mythology, knights, dragons, guinea pigs and school life feature in the subjects. The catalogue counts 124 books from 1984 to This Is the Tree We Planted (2022).

Ashley Bryan

26 books• 1 series

Ashley Frederick Bryan (1923-2022) wrote and illustrated children's books, drawing subjects largely from the African-American experience. Bryan was a United States nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and took the Children's Literature Legacy Award in 2009. The picture book Freedom Over Me reached the 2016 Kirkus Prize shortlist and earned a Newbery Honor. The catalogue holds 26 titles, from The Ox of the Wonderful Horns and Other African Folktales (1971) to Infinite Hope (2019), among them The Dancing Granny (1977), Beat the Story-Drum, Pum-Pum (1980) and The Cat's Purr (1985). Folklore, African tales, legends, Anansi and spirituals run through the subjects.

Picture books are David Litchfield's form: children's fiction, music, bears, musicians, friendship and dogs run through the recorded subjects. Eight titles are catalogued between The Bear and the Piano (2015) and The Dinosaur Next Door (2024), and the listing groups part of the work as the Bear and the Piano series. Grandad's Secret Giant and The Boy and the Giant both appeared in 2017, with four further books dated 2019 or 2020. Seven titles have a recorded length, at a median of 40 pages.

Brendan Slocumb writes musical crime fiction. Three novels stand in the catalogue: The Violin Conspiracy in 2022, Symphony of Secrets in 2023 and The Dark Maestro in 2025, each built on music, mystery and Black American life. Slocumb was born in Yuba City, California and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, holds a music education degree in violin and viola from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and spent more than twenty years teaching music in public and private schools while performing with orchestras around Washington, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Slocumb also plays in a rock band, Geppetto's Wüd.