Well, it all started at 2:00 a.m., thank you very much! Any other questions? OK, I’ll fill in a few more details. I’d been teaching private piano lessons for a few years, as well as teaching music in my children’s Montessori preschool. Word spread quickly that I was teaching piano, and people kept asking me to teach piano to very young kids. I tried it a few times, and I have to say that it wasn’t much fun for me or the kids! In most cases, their attention span is too short, and their hands are too small to properly reach the keys. Frankly, it was kind of a mess!
But people kept asking!
Meanwhile, my own daughter, Deanna, was about 3, and was becoming interested in music herself. My own little prodigy was starting to play on the piano just beautifully (OK, that’s a lie, she was banging away, driving me nuts!), and I knew I had to come up with something for her. That’s when I spotted a little Music Maker zither at my local music store. They were kind of expensive, I thought. Should I spend 50 bucks on something that might just gather dust and clutter up my house even more than it already is?
Well, I went ahead and bought one for her. Wow, did that decision ever turn out to be a life changing one! I gave the zither to Deanna, and like every kid I’ve seen and taught since then, (literally hundreds, if not over a thousand), she could immediately play beautiful music! No more pounding and banging on my treasured grand piano! She had her own beautiful instrument now!
We started bringing the zither with us to my mom’s nursing home, where Deanna would play beautiful music for Grandma and all the residents. People started fighting over who would get to play it next, and I’m not just talking about the kids here! Adults were having just as much fun with it as the kids were!
Then it happened. You know, that 2:00 a.m. thing. I was sleeping soundly when all of a sudden I woke up, and was “told” that I will create a children’s music curriculum, based on that zither! “I will? Really? Well, okay!”, I thought, and I could hardly wait for the next morning to come, just so I could get started!
Morning finally came, and I logged onto my old AutoCAD program, a leftover from my previous career as a facility space planner for our local utility company. I carefully measured the sheet music that came with my zither, and created all the symbol blocks in AutoCAD that I would need to make professional-looking sheet music for Deanna’s zither. Simple, right?
Right. Just go ahead and get out there and just, you know, publish ’em.
Have you ever read the book “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, or “If You Give a Moose a Muffin”? Yeah well, “just publishing your books” is a lot like those books. There are so many obstacles! But after finally copyrighting all my hard work, coming up with my own publishing company and logo (Moose and Bubbles Publishing, named after my late parents Hy and Janette, whose nicknames for each other were Moose and Bubbles), working out all the ridiculously trying details of getting bound books of my music to line up correctly and not cost an absolute fortune to produce, figuring out how to list them on my own website as well as Amazon and eBay, and much more, as of 2025 there are about 30,000 World of Harmony Music books in 47 countries!
Ever wonder about the strange price? My books cost $11.11. Long story short, the times 1:11 and 11:11, and the numbers 111 and 1111 were very special between my mom and me. So the price is in memory of Mom.
Well, thanks for reading my story! I truly hope that my books will continue to give children all over the world a great introduction to the fun and love found in playing music. Now it’s your turn. Won’t you share your own story with me? Tell me how you’re using my books! Together, let’s help to create a World of Harmony through music, one family at a time!
In harmony all ways,
Debbie Center 
Founder of World of Harmony Music