Emily Arrow

Emily Arrow, an award-winning educator, author, and songwriter for young audiences, is recognized for her gentle ukulele compositions and resides in Houston, Texas. A Berklee College of Music alumna, she obtained Orff Shulwerk certification, an approach that weaves music, movement, speech, and drama into playful learning. Her mission centers on fostering enthusiasm for both reading and music, which she achieves by pairing the two in picture books focused on musical themes and in songs drawn from stories, always with author approval and joint effort. She performs on her ukulele, which she calls Bow, and pioneered a distinctive style through the Storytime Singalong series of picture-book-inspired tracks. The first installment appeared in 2016, followed by the second volume the next year. Wintertime Singalong also surfaced in 2017, spotlighting seasonal topics such as holidays, snow, and yetis. Cantata Learning issued two 2019 entries in the My Feelings, My Choices series—Trying Again, illustrated by Kayla Stark, and Checking In, illustrated by Joy Steurwald—each supplying Arrow’s lyrics and melodies via QR code. That same year saw the arrival of Storytime Singalong, Vol. 3, whose source material extended to her own 2020 picture book STUDIO: A Place for Art to Start, illustrated by James and Melissa Buchanan and devoted to the search for creative space. Additional volumes in the My Feelings, My Choices series continued under her authorship. The pared-back 2020 release Ukulele Moon carried the subtitle Peaceful Moon Songs for Calm and Rest. In 2023 she issued Sing-Along with Emily Arrow, whose themes ranged across books, animals, cooking, and songwriting itself. She has also produced children’s songbooks and method books for ukulele and keyboard. Nature Sings arrived in 2024, gathering tracks about flora, fauna, and other natural elements, among them “Let It Grow” and “Bubbles in the Park.” As founder of the Rainbow Song School, she inaugurated an online and pop-up instructional studio that year.