Musical Development and Music Education (Riva, 2021) offers an experimentally grounded psychological overview of how children develop musically and how that knowledge can sharpen classroom practice. The authors frame the book around two pressing pedagogical realities—the gap between teachers’ experiences and children’s musical worlds, and policy-driven regulation of schooling—arguing that developmental music psychology can orient curricula and methods more reliably. The volume spans eight chapters: two methodological and six thematic. It introduces core cognitive perspectives (Chomsky, Piaget, Bruner; the mind–brain problem) and contrasts them with behaviorist approaches to learning and classroom management to situate today’s research landscape. It then synthesizes stage-based models of musical growth (Gardner; Swanwick & Tillman; Hargreaves) and theories of children’s musical thinking (Serafine; Bamberger), highlighting implications for instruction. Early musical perception—from prenatal to infancy—is mapped across spectral (pitch, scales, harmony) and temporal (rhythm, meter) structures. A central concept is musical enculturation: how culture narrows perception and how education can broaden children’s “code” repertoires across Western and traditional idioms, a question with particular relevance for Bulgaria. The closing chapters review how training shapes competence and how musicians differ cognitively from non-musicians, the links between musical ability and language (phonological orientation, dyslexia), and mechanisms of musical emotion across ages. Intended for educators and researchers, the book functions as a compact guide to current evidence with direct classroom relevance.