The Critical Importance of “Annoying” Books in Childhood Reading: A Guide to Socially Committed Musical Selections

“Yes to ‘annoying’ books: reading should be critical from childhood”. This article by Claudio Moyano Arellano guides the musical selection of this cafe, which we started with “Revolting Children” from the musical “Matilda” by Tim Minchin. We continue with a fragment of the work of satire and social criticism “Roman de Fauvel”, from the s. XIV, to later recall the final fragment of “Symphony No. 2, The Age of Anxiety” by Leonard Bernstein on the poem of the same title by WH Auden that talks about identity in industrialized society. We continue with more socially committed pieces such as “Farewell to Stromness” by Peter Maxwell Davies, which he wrote in protest against the construction of a mine, or Britten’s “Ballad of Heroes Op. 14” dedicated to the International Brigade members of England who intervened in the Spanish Civil War. Finally, we got lost in the Roal Dahl house-museum in the town of Great Missenden, England, where we arrived with a fragment of Sibelius’s “Tapiola”, music linked to the last book, “The Minpins” by Dahl.