More complex than pop music and written by composers who in many cases have been dead for a long time, classical music can be difficult for children to access. Writer Mike Venezia has a solution. His project is to make learning about great composers fun, and he succeeds in doing so in his marvelous introduction to Bach for children.

Venezia is an artist by training who wrote a successful series of children’s books about the world’s greatest artists. When he finished that series he embarked on several others, including one called “Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Composers,” among them Johann Sebastian Bach.

The book is only 32 pages long but surprisingly comprehensive and engaging. It contains a short biography of Bach and briefly describes some of his most important compositions in simple but effective terms.

In discussing Bach’s cantatas, for example, Venezia writes that church services in Bach’s time could last up to five hours, so “people depended on cantata music to keep them interested and awake.”

He writes that Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor “is filled with big, powerful sounds,” adding that “it had an energy and force that had never been heard before.”

Venezia brings the feel of Bach’s music to life for young readers when he writes that “many of (Bach’s) mighty organ pieces have been known to cause church rafters and windows to shake.”

Of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Venezia writes they “take you on an amazing sound trip. They start out peacefully, build to a swirling musical whirlwind, and drop you back off where things are nice and calm again.”

He concisely and accurately describes the entire genre of Baroque music as having a “grand, decorative feeling.”

Images make up at least half of the content on any given page in the book. These include Venezia’s colorful and often funny illustrations with captions that are likely to draw in young readers. He also presents images of paintings of Bach and his era, and he includes a photograph from a church where Bach conducted.

Venezia urges readers to listen to Bach, noting that his music is widely played on classical stations and elsewhere, including at community concerts.

This book is a wonderful way to introduce children to Bach and to the Portland Bach Festival, which runs June 19-24 and will include several events for children, including children’s concerts.

Dave Canarie is a Portland attorney and adjunct faculty member at the University of Southern Maine and Saint Joseph’s College.