This book offers a fresh and diverse perspective on home musical activities of young children from a variety of countries, including; Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, South Africa,Taiwan, the UK, and the United States. Narrowing their study to seven-year-olds from middle-class families, the articles in this volume argue that home musical experiences provide new and important windows into musical childhoods as they relate to issues of identity, family life, gender, culture, social class and schooling. Though childhood musical engagement differs considerably, it has direct implications for a better understanding of music education and childhood development. Using a wiki to share data and research across time and space, this volume is a model for collaborative cross-cultural research and is centered on the home as a primary research site for children's musical engagement.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: MyPlace, MyMusic: Children's Home Musical Experiences Across the World / Beatriz Ilari and Susan Young

Section 1: Theoretical Framework and Methods
1. Musical Childhoods: Theoretical Background and New Directions / Susan Young
2. The MyPlace, MyMusic Wiki: Enabling and Transforming the Methods and Processes of Research / Jèssica Pérez

Section 2: Thematic Interpretations
3. Public and Private Musical Worlds of Children / Claudia Gluschankof
4. Belonging and Identity: Exploring Gendered Meanings of Musicking in Seven-year-olds / Elizabeth Andang'o and Caroline Brendel Pacheco
5. Nurturing MY MUSICal Child: Parental Perspectives and Influences / Theano Koutsoupidou
6. Middle Class Musical Childhoods: Autonomy, Concerted Cultivation, and Consumer Culture / Beatriz Ilari

Section 3: New Ideas
7. Nurturing the Musical "Open-Earedness" of Seven-year-olds / Diane Persellin
8. Musical Childhoods in South Africa: "The times they are a-changin'" / Sheila C. Woodward
9. The Influence of Parental Goals and Practices on Children's Musical Interests and Development: A Perspective on Chinese Families in Singapore / Chee-Hoo Lum
Conclusion: Lessons Learned / Beatriz Ilari, Susan Young, and Claudia Gluschankof
List of References
List of Contributors
Index

Beatriz Ilari is Assistant Professor of Music Education at the University of Southern California. She has published five books in Brazil, including Música na infância e adolescência and Em busca da mente musical and is editor of Perspectives: Journal of the Early Childhood Music & Movement.

Susan Young is Retired Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Studies and Music Education at the University of Exeter, UK. She is author of Music with the Under Fours and Music 3-5.