"As far back as I can remember, there have been two constants in my life--music and writing," Judie Angell stated in a publicity release for Bradbury Press. "The music was always there as background for the stories in my head, a rhythm to fit the mood." Angell, the author of popular novels for young people of various age groups, recalled the sound of the Victrola playing in the mid-1940s while she, an eight- or nine-year-old, fashioned stories in crayon about a girl who rescues various animals from perilous situations. Angell's concern for animals was eventually displaced by a passion for baseball, but her interest in music continued to develop; the works of Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg and Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky provided the atmosphere as she depicted the painful defeats of the Brooklyn Dodgers. And as an adolescent in the 1950s, the author recorded personal thoughts and...