The Music Inside Us: Yo-Yo Ma and His Gifts to the World

Howe highlights the celebrated cellist’s introspective nature, conveying questions that Yo-Yo Ma (b. 1955) has asked throughout his life, first as a young musician taught by his father—“What does it mean to be a cellist? To be a musician? To be a human being?”—and later when questioning his future: “Who am I when I am not the obedient son, when I am not the cellist everyone expects me to be?” In diaphanous multimedia spreads with velvety textures, Wong portrays Ma as a young boy struggling to get his cello case up the stairs of his family’s Paris apartment, playing on television for the president of the United States, and then, in adolescence, slumped on his bed reading a comic book. Studying anthropology leads to further questions, a career choice, and to a realization: “I am a human being first, a musician second, a cellist third.” It’s a warm, musing biographical work that details a figure’s desire to “bring people together in harmony and joy”—and invites readers to ask and answer questions of their own. Ages 4–8. (June)