The Girl Who Heard the Music, a tale of two stories that needed to be halved

The story within The Girl Who Heard the Music is interesting. It’s about a piano prodigy who lived on a remote island. It’s also about a massive trash problem that the island is constantly dealing with from its tourists and the water surrounding it. It’s also about a school that was built from tens of thousands of bottles and cans. There’s a lot happening in The Girl Who Heard the Music and somewhere in the book is an inspiring story, if you manage to isolate that aspect of it.

Mahani Teave is the titular girl in the book’s title. She grew up on Easter Island and always had a knack for music, but it wasn’t until a retired piano teacher showed up on the island that her talents really took off. Prior to that she’d happily clang along with whatever instrument was in front of her. It was when she was seated at the piano that her abilities clicked and she could instantaneously play almost anything on the keyboard.

Unfortunately for the budding protégé, this teacher’s visa was expiring, which meant that her skills would have to wait. She wrote to a piano grandmaster who agreed to visit  Easter Island and hear her play. He suggested that she leave and go to a place that could nurture her abilities. It was a hard decision, but Teave left the island, wore flowers in her hair when she performed and had several #1 positions on Billboard.

That’s one story in The Girl Who Heard the Music.

When she came back to Easter Island she realized how much pollution was in the water surrounding it. She started brainstorming the issue with some other locals and came up with a genuine solution. They would take as much trash as they could out of the ocean and build Easter Island’s first music school! Everyone pitched in, gathered up thousands of bottles, cans, cardboard, and tires that they found on the beach, and created a structure that exists as a testament to recycling and a destination for the arts on Easter Island.

That’s another story in The Girl Who Heard the Music.

As an adult reading this illustrated book, I’m torn because there’s nothing about its content that I disagree with or don’t like. However, as a book, you’ve got two narratives that feel forced in their final package. The story about the music school that used recycled bottles as its construction materials is a solid narrative that could’ve stood on its own. The story about piano prodigy Mahani Teave is wonderful but seems out of place in the book.

The unique fact about her prodigal abilities is that she lived on Easter Island, a very remote place, and had limited exposure to a piano. That’s certainly worthy of a book in its own right, but here in The Girl Who Heard the Music, the two stories don’t add up to a whole sum. The result is an illustrated book that has a hard break in its tone, one being Teave’s story, and the other being the trash problem and the school that was created.

More sarcastic readers might question what happened to the trash problem that affects Easter Island. After all, they built an arts and music school on the island and didn’t divert the water currents to lessen the garbage. Is the conflict within the book the pollution plaguing the island or the island’s lack of a facility to study art and music? The illustrations in the book are charming and as long as young readers don’t think too much about what’s happening in it then the book will be an enjoyable, can-do tale of making a school out of recycled materials or about a piano prodigy. The mystery of anything happening on Easter Island will certainly assist some young readers in enjoying the story, but if that’s the only reason they’re here there are better books out there for them.

The Girl Who Heard the Music: How One Pianist and 85,000 Bottles and Cans Brought New Hope to an Island is by Marni Fogelson and Mahani Teave, with illustrations by Marta Alvarez Miguens and is available on Sourcebooks.  

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