This is the first ever Book Reading Party with Students at Penny Lazarus Piano Studio! Use the February winter break to read the very moving middle school age book “The Line Tender.” A line tender is a person whose job it is to help divers tend to work under the water. In this book, the work under water is investigating the seal and the great white shark population of the waters on the East Coast of Massachusetts. This fits with our music theme of this year; thinking about “A River Runs Through Us” since the Merrimack River is tidal and saltwater. Seals and sharks can be found where the river meets the ocean, even here in Newburyport. Joining us will be guests who study the health of our river and can shed light on the changing environment, the good and the bad and the ugly, of our vital waterway. But just in case you think “The Line Tender” is just about oceanography; it is not! Let’s also read and talk about the “tender” relationship between 12 year old Lucy Everhart, her best friend Fred and Lucy’s mother, who died from a brain embolism while studying great white sharks, all the while thinking of how the music we play can also be used to illustrate similar connections with our emotions.