The Mozart Season » (First Edition)

Virginia Euwer Wolff is an accomplished violinist and former elementary school and high school English teacher. Her first book for young readers, Probably Still Nick Swansen, was published in 1988 and won both the International Reading Association Award and the PEN-West Book Award. Since then she has written several more critically acclaimed young adult novels, earning more honors, including the Golden Kite Award for Fiction and the Jane Addams Book Award for Children’s Books that Build Peace.

“Remember, what’s down inside you, all covered up—the things of your soul. The important, secret things . . . The story of you, all buried, let the music caress it out into the open.”

When Allegra was a little girl, she thought she would pick up her violin and it would sing for her—that the music was hidden inside her instrument.

Now that Allegra is twelve, she believes the music is in her fingers, and the summer after seventh grade she has to teach them well. She’s the youngest contestant in the Ernest Bloch Young Musicians’ Competition.

She knows she will learn the notes to the concerto, but what she doesn’t realize is she’ll also learn—how to close the gap between herself and Mozart to find the real music inside her heart.

Children's Literature

When 12-year-old Allegra learns that she will spend her summer studying Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto in preparation for a young musician's competition, she knows she must make sacrifices. Is this what she really wants to do? Will she embarrass herself, her family, and her teacher with her performance? Her teacher explains that just playing Mozart is not enough, the key to greatness is to find one's own way into the heart of this concerto. For all who have ever seriously studied an instrument, this rich story rings true.