I remember scouring my elementary and middle-school libraries for every book I could find on music, any kind of music. Books about composers, Broadway folk, and everything in between. Sometimes you could get lucky and find a book about the '60s with a few sentences about the Beatles, the Stones, or even hippies. Maybe a shot of a punk or two in a '70s chronicle.

Brian Aberback's Black Sabbath: Pioneers of Heavy Metal made it into our mailbox recently, in all its brightly-covered, hardback glory, with tons of wicked pictures, as a part of Enslow Publishers' "Rebels Of Rock" series.

The back cover touts editions on bands like the Clash, the Stones, and Aerosmith. I guarantee you that I would have straight-up stolen all three of these from my school library.

The band's prodigious sex, drinking, drug use and general chicanery on tour and in the studio is barely mentioned. You won't hear about Ozzy smoking his weight in hash, or the time cocaine practically joined the band and started getting royalties.

But young readers will get plenty of facts and insight, since the author is a veteran rock journalist. This man is doing the Dark Lord's work.

More adventurous kids should pick up 2010's I Am Ozzy, Mr. Osbourne's exhaustive memoir, plus buy at least the first five Sabbath albums and all the '80s Ozzy albums, even The Ultimate Sin, which has some pretty heavy moments.