Good recorder teaching books?

[Supposedtobeworking1]

My 8 year old DS has decided that he wants to learn to play the recorder and as it was the one and only instrument that I ever learned to play (albeit I haven't picked one up for over 25 years now!) I decided to order us both a reasonable quality plastic Yamaha descant recorder yesterday. DS is grade 4 level on cello and piano so already a competent musician for his age but has never played any sort of wind instrument before so I now need to find a good tutor book series for us to work through together. Could anyone recommend something that covers all the basics and has plenty of fun pieces but isn't too slow in terms of progression through the terminology etc... given that he can already read music and ideally includes some duet pieces so that we can just have fun together?

Recorder from the Beginning

Red hot recorder by Sarah Watts,

The ABRSM also do recorder exams and music, so check out their website.

And James Rae is an excellent composer/teacher who has some recorder books:

www.schott-music.co.uk/shop/show,316049,s.html

Oh - and I meant to add the BBC Young Musician woodwind finals recently included a recorder player. You can probably find it on BBC4 'catch up' i-player .

Another vote for Red Hot Recorder here!

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and thanks Ferguson. I have actually set up the Sky box to record all the Young Musician finals but not had the time to sit and watch any yet apart from a small snippet of the percussion finals last week which were absolutely brilliant!

There's also one called Fun and Games with the recorder published by Schott, which has a bit more variety and deeper technical exercises in but it's hard to buy these days, I think it's going out of print. And another one which is slightly old fashioned but good for older learners as it goes quite fast is Enjoy the Recorder by the late Brian Bonsor. I've had success using both of those with y6/7 starters and with Red Hot from Year 2-5 more. Have fun!

I would say Ready, Steady, Recorder by Sarah Watts. It is excellent and has a great CD that goes with it.