In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.

Previous contributors include Bret Easton Ellis, Kate Christensen, Kevin Brockmeier, George Pelecanos, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Myla Goldberg, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.

Mattue Roth's My First Kafka is truly a children's book for all ages. Roth's faithfully dark and clever reworkings of three Franz Kafka stories combined with Rohan Daniel Eason's black and white illustrations make this a book the whole family will enjoy.

Wired wrote of the book:

“The haunting black-and-white sketches paired with Roth's elegant verses do justice to the sense of foreboding Kafka was so good at crafting.”

Stream a Spotify playlist of these tunes. If you don't have Spotify yet, sign up for the free service.

In his own words, here is Matthue Roth's Book Notes music playlist for his children's book, My First Kafka:

“Innocent When You Dream,” Tom Waits

To be incredibly immodest: This is probably the perfect worst lullaby to play your kids, and My First Kafka might be the perfect worst bedtime story. Which is to say, kids will probably love both, and understand both — probably better than adults do. “Running through the graveyard, we laughed, my friends and I,” he sings, melancholy and playful at once. “We swore we'd be together until the day we died.” Kids get sadness. But to them, sadness isn't completely separate from humor. In fact, reportedly, Kafka thought his own stories were hilarious; he'd read them aloud to his friends and collapse in laughter. So let's open with a lullaby. And then let's crank the music up.

Read the full article:
http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2013/10/book_notes_matt_23.html