Disconcerting Stories

Discover which is the rotten lie in each disconcerting story!

The history of music is full of amusing, dramatic and legendary little anecdotes. Those curiosities have been perpetuated over centuries. They bring us closer to the masters and give the best composers of all time a more human dimension.

In this new picture book by Oriol Garcia Molsosa, young readers will find five stories based on well-known anecdotes about Purcell, Verdi, JS Bach, Scarlatti and Benny Goodman. 

There is something for everyone: animals, jazz, desserts, great composers and even kings are involved.

And all the anecdotes have something in common: they all are true. But the truth is that every single story also hides a little rotten lie:

• The day the king gave a concert
• The dessert, the chef and the singer
• Benny’s suitcase
• The forbidden sheet music
• Pulcinella and Scarlatti

To make the experience even more delightful, each story includes a QR to listen to the musical fragment to which it refers. A coda to enjoy every line and note of the book with all the senses.

Disconcerting Stories is an invitation to pay attention, find the discordant and play “truth or lie” with the funny characters created by Mercè Galí to represent them: Risoluto and Giocoso.

Discover which is the rotten lie in each story!

Disconcerting Stories

by Oriol Garcia Molsosa. Illustrated by Mercè Galí

25.5 x 19.5 cm | 64 pages | Hardcover | Ages 5+

Publication: Febrer 2023

ORIOL GARCIA MOLSOSA plays clarinet in Ensemble Una cosa rara and the Stadler Trio. He combines teaching History of Music with colaborations for the Fundació Obra Social La Caixa, children’s magazines such as Cavall Fort and publishing houses like Casals. Besides, he loves writing short stories. In 2019 was awarded with the Correlletres prize for the story: The Mermaid and the Fisher. In Combel we’ve published The Captain Greedy Guts and Sailor Hawk-eyed.

MERCÈ GALÍ does drawings for stories, textbooks, posters, magazine covers and other projects. She has loved children’s literature since she was very little herself, growing up surrounded by stories in her parents’ bookshop, Llibreria Galí at Verdi 52 in Gràcia, where she spent hours browsing the illustrations. She has illustrated stories for many publishers, and in magazines such as Tatano and Cavall Fort. In her musical persona, she forms part of Dúmbala Canalla, a group that plays Balkan music, as singer, songwriter and tambourinist. In Combel, you can see her work in All I Know About the Poop, In the Desert Den. Simply Me and The No-Snooze Mouse from the Horse series.