Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 64 pages
- Published by: Knopf Books for Young Readers August 30, 1994
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0679856188
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0679856184
-
Book Dimensions:
11.5 x 9.8 x 0.8 inches
- Weighs: 1.3 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
For this intimate, moody introduction to jazz, Monceaux offers emphatic mixed-media portraits and biographies of favorite musicians. Typically, Monceaux frames a folk-arty picture of a musician with layers of scribbled colors and scrawled details about his or her life. He often bestows such trimmings as buttons, gloves or lace on his subjects' clothing; Charlie Parker himself gets a plastic party horn, Leadbelly a faux guitar, John Coltrane a toy sax. Next to each image appears a brief biography, warmly informed by the author's reflections: Louis Armstrong is described performing a musical eulogy at the New Orleans funeral of Monceaux's uncle; Count Basie regales guests at Monceaux's grandparents' anniversary party at the Starlight Ballroom in Chicago; a Nina Simone tape fortifies Monceaux in 1966, when he was stationed off the Vietnam coast. The text straightforwardly mentions racism, drug abuse, alcoholism and other adult themes. For example, Monceaux compares a Billie Holiday song about a lynching to "a group of white men [who] drove past me in a car and called me a nigger." Monceaux's demonstration of how music influenced his youth and informed his art may well inspire readers to seek heroes of their own. Ages 9-up.-- drove past me in a car and called me a nigger." Monceaux's demonstration of how music influenced his youth and informed his art may well inspire readers to seek heroes of their own. Ages 9-up.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up-Personal reflections on well-known blues, swing, beebop, and modern jazz artists, presented with passion and respect. Through prose and art, Monceaux attempts to communicate the importance of jazz in his own life and in our country's cultural heritage. Brief biographical sketches not only provide basic facts about the subjects' lives, but also highlight their importance in the field of music and the historical development of this genre. Over forty instrumentalists and vocalists are discussed, ranging from Buddy Bolden to Nat King Cole, Leadbelly to Charlie Parker, Bessie Smith to Ella Fitzgerald. Each profile faces a full-page artistic rendition of the musician at work. Monceaux's art is interpretive; his multimedia paintings are created from pastels, markers, paint, and collage. He has incorporated hand-written facts inside the illustrations; trying to decipher this writing changes the book into an almost interactive experience-it's not always easy, but the challenge is fun. This unique offering, whose subjective tone adds to its appeal, will be a fine addition to collections that already include
Studs Terkel's Giants of Jazz (Crowell, 1992), Richard Rennert's Jazz Stars (Chelsea, 1993), and Langston Hughes's Jazz (Watts, 1982; o.p.).
Renee Steinberg, Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJCopyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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