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Walter Dean Myers

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Jazz Paperback – Picture Book, September 15, 2008

by Walter Dean Myers (Author), Christopher Myers (Illustrator)

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There's a crazy syncopation /and it's tearing through the nation / and it's bringing sweet elation / to every single tune./ It's Jazz

One of TIME's 100 Best Children's Books of All Time

Fifteen poems, infused with the rhythm and wordplay of jazz music, are paired with bold, stylized illustrations of performers and dancers to convey the history and breadth of this unique musical style. From bebop to New Orleans, from ragtime to boogie, and every style in between, Jazz takes readers on a musical journey from jazz's beginnings to the present day.
Created by a celebrated father-son team, Jazz is a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and a Kirkus Best Children's Books Editor's Choice.

In addition to its colorful and lyrical celebration, the book includes a brief introductory essay about the history and form of jazz, as well as a timeline and glossary of jazz terms.

Coretta Scott King Award Honor for illustration
ALA Notable Children's Book
Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award
Publishers Weekly's 100 Best Books of the Year
Kirkus Reviews Editor's Choice
Booklist Editor's Choice
Booklist Top Ten in Black History
Book Link's Best New Books for the Classroom
Golden Kite Award: Picture Book Text

Reading age

8 - 12 years
Print length

48 pages
Language

English
Grade level

3 - 7
Lexile measure

NP
Dimensions

9.5 x 0.15 x 11.49 inches
Publisher

Holiday House
Publication date

September 15, 2008
ISBN-10

0823421732
ISBN-13

978-0823421732
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Editorial Reviews

Review

★ "A welcome addition to the literature of jazz."—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

★ "[A] mesmerizing verbal and visual riff on a uniquely American art form." —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

★ "An absolutely airtight melding of words and pictures that is perfectly accessible to a younger audience." —Booklist, Starred Review

"Readers will find music coming irresistibly into their heads." —The Horn Book

About the Author

Walter Dean Myers (1937 - 2014) was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He was one of the premier authors of books for children, and received numerous awards including the Michael L. Printz award and the Coretta Scott King Award.

Christopher Myers is a writer and fine artist, but he is best known for his award-winning picture books, such as the Caldecott and Coretta Scott King honor book Harlem, written by his father, and his own Black Cat, which also received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. He lives and works in New York City.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Holiday House; Illustrated edition (September 15, 2008)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 48 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0823421732
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0823421732
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 8 - 12 years
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ NP
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 3 - 7
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.5 x 0.15 x 11.49 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #740,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #49 in Teen & Young Adult Musician Biographies
- #136 in Teen & Young Adult Music Fiction
- #201 in Poetry for Teens & Young Adults

Customer Reviews:
72

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Walter Dean Myers

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Walter Dean Myers is a New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author who has garnered much respect and admiration for his fiction, nonfiction, and poetry for young people. Winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award, he is considered one of the preeminent writers for children. He lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, with his family.

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Hetherin

and he loved dancing to it and turning the pages as he ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2017

Verified Purchase

We first discovered this book-CD set at the local library when our son was two, and he loved dancing to it and turning the pages as he danced. Then it disappeared from the library, so we bought it for his fourth birthday. This time, he enjoyed playing his drums along with it. It's an excellent combination of music and book, with beautiful pictures, and I highly recommend it, especially to people who love music and words, and want their children to understand that love, if not also share it.

2 people found this helpful

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H. Ellis

Poetry for all ages

Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2013

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Any one who loves jazz and the jazz culture will be wooed by this lovely book. Illustrations by Christopher Myers and fine poetry by Walter Dean Myers written in the text like music itself. This is a fine book for all ages, a treasure to American heritage.

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RileyCS

Son LOVES this book!!

Reviewed in the United States on January 24, 2018

Verified Purchase

This is a beautifully illustrated book with great poetry for the young jazz lover!

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2012

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I gave this book to my son for Christmas. He's a Jazz student and History major at a local University, and loves the book. Walter Dean Myers is a great writer, and his son's a talented illustrator.

2 people found this helpful

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K.L. Reynolds

Buyer Beware

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2021

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I loved this book. My students enjoy me reading this. However, upon the second use of the book, the pages became unglued. They were falling out. So disappointed. I needed this book for my poetry unit, so I taped the pages rather then taking it back.

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2013

Jazz is a book created by Walter Dean Myers and his father. Their love of jazz brought this father-son duo together to create this beautifully illustrated book that goes into the different subgenres and styles of Jazz. From Bebop to Boogie and Ragtime, this book has it all. This book contains art with line styles that are similar to water flowing down a stream, and saturated colors that convey emotion. The art is used to illustrate lively poems that almost dance right off the page. This book is an excellent introduction to Jazz for children, and will really allow children not to just hear the emotion this is conveyed through Jazz but to feel it from the brushstrokes as well.

2 people found this helpful

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K. Heywood

book review

Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2009

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Very nice illustrations. It is more of poetry than a story about jazz, but I do appreciate it. I'd read this with probably late elementary age kids.

One person found this helpful

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Betsy Bird

A clarinet sassing its way through a Sunday-night sermon

Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2006

Okay. A bit of a confession here. Back in 2003 I wrote a review of "Blues Journey" in which I said many nice things including, "This is the book that took my breath away", which is fairly expansive even for me. Three years have now passed, and what father/son team Walter and Christopher Myers did for the blues they are doing now for jazz. Looking back on "Blues Journey", I realize that at the time this was not a book I was particularly good at understanding. I had the wherewithal to know that it was beautiful, but if you asked me the number of times I've thought about "Blues Journey" in this three year interim, the answer would be hardly at all. "Jazz" is different. I know it sounds unlikely, but I think this book has something its predecessor lacked. "Jazz" has a purpose, defined by its dedication ("To the children of New Orleans") and brought to searing sizzling life by both its author and its artist. No one can tell you after perusing this book that "Jazz" isn't hot as all get out.

An introduction. For two green pages we are given some facts before the fancy. What is jazz? Where are its roots? How did it grow, prosper, and come to flourish? Where is it today? That's a lot to slip into two little pages, but before you know it you've learned a fact or two and on you go to the poems. They echo what we've just discovered about the music itself. You're looking at a man, bare to the waist, beating out a rhythm on the drum just in front of him. Now it's a black silhouette of a piano player poised against a shifting deepening red background, lit from below. We're in New Orleans following a jazz funeral, then looking down on a charismatic keyboardist with a zoot suit of fine scarlet lines. Beautiful women croon to men curved over, above, and around their instruments. It's jazz, baby. With a glossary in the back and a timeline for kicks.

Right off the bat I'd like to thank Mr. Myers senior for explaining something to me in his lengthy two-page Introduction that I didn't even know I didn't know. The birth of jazz: how did it happen? The answer can be found in a small selection at the bottom of the first page. "Since so many black musicians were still not formally trained in reading musical notation, there had to be some way of knowing what the other players were going to do so that they could perform together". So they used common chord structures that would allow them to "stray from the melody" and come back to it howsoever they were inclined. You would think that your average twenty-eight-year-old American would have picked up this kind of information somewhere amongst their various meanderings. Not so much. To Mr. Walter then, a debt of gratitude.

Music related books for youth, be they picture books, novels, or comic books, have the awesomely difficult task of conveying an absent sense through words alone. Sometimes a picture might help, but it is the rhythm of the words that keep the toes tapping and throat humming. When this book began I wasn't quite in the right mind set. I read the poems the same way you might read something by Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson. But even my Neanderthal brain began to get into the swing of things when I encountered the poem, "Oh, Miss Kitty". It starts with a kind of blues refrain about the sweet Miss Kitty who's anything but small. Then the poem starts to get going. Without realizing it, your brain has suddenly started to add additional voices aside from the person "singing" the song. You read, "she's in love with the piano man" when suddenly words of a different color and font jump out of nowhere to say, "tickle them ivories, boy!". Who said that? To my mind, it's the jazz orchestra itself. And without even realizing it I'm hearing different voices, tones, rhythms, beats, and all with just the gentle prodding of Walter's words and some creative font use. Combine that with, what Joann Sfar in "Klezmer" called the, "silent melody of drawing", and you're as close as you'll ever get to fooling your ears through your eyes.

I also happen to think that Christopher Myers is getting better and better as the years go by. A quick glance at the publication page and we see that the illustrations were done, "by painting black ink on acetate and placing it over acrylic". I have no idea what that means. Fortunately, I don't need to. Christopher is pushing himself here, bringing to mind scenes of remarkable beauty. A bassist stands in the harsh white light, all white features against black shadows. I like Myers better when he presents his musicians rather than his dancers. For some reason, the swing dancers in "Jazz" seem to have less verve and pep than even the most soulful of saxophonists. Sometimes Christopher messes with you too. The poem "Sesssion II" about a slide trombone is coupled against the image of a man playing the drums. "Session I", begins with, "Bass thumping like death gone happy", but instead there's a horn player standing front and center. Still, jazz is an ensemble creation. You don't blame an instrument if it appears where you thought another might crop up. Some leniency is required.

Not too long ago I was with a group of librarians discussing "Jazz" at their leisure. It was the opinion of some that in spite of its picture book packaging, this is a teen book at its core. No violence or sexual references inspired such an assumption. It's just that "Jazz" has a kind of sophistication to it that children may not be accustomed to. I hear now the mighty roar of the masses saying something to the equivalent of, "Well GET them accustomed to it!". Why place this book in an area where teens will pooh-pooh it for its young packaging while the audience that might get something out of it finds it out of reach and inaccessible? And I agree with you there. Still, I would suggest that for those libraries savvy enough (savvy may equal rich in this case) to risk it, try putting "Jazz" in both areas. It won't speak to all the kids or all the teens, but sometimes "some" is just enough.

We all have our favorite jazz related picture books. Most were created by Chris Raschka ("Charlie Parker Played Be Bop", "Mysterious Thelonious", "John Coltrane's Giant Steps", amongst others) with others filtering in here and there. My favorite is "Jazz". No children's book, to my mind, has acknowledged the New Orleans hurricane tragedy yet. No children's book has had the chance. And while I am certain that "Jazz" was in production before the hurricane ever hit, Myers and son have tipped their hat to the city's brilliant musical past with just the right book. You'd be a fool to let yourself pass this one up.

21 people found this helpful

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Alycia Pindar

Stunning

Reviewed in Canada on May 28, 2021

Verified Purchase

Incredible writing told in verse (rhyming and not)
Beautifully illustrated
Powerful history of jazz!
(Using with my PRI, JR, AND INT classes when/if we return to in-person learning.)

JasonMADCow

Muy buen libro. Ilustraciones preciosas, encuadernado muy fragil

Reviewed in Spain on June 6, 2023

Verified Purchase

Aparte del propio encuadernado, el libro es precioso. Muy interesante con buenas ilustraciones.

Quizas estaria bien con un audio-cd para escuchar a la vez o similar

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Marina Makropoulos

Jazz Poetry

Reviewed in Canada on December 22, 2021

Verified Purchase

Love this Jazz historical timeline/black heritage focus. It plays homage to all the greats!

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