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Gr 3-6 "Before John was a jazz giant, /he/was/all/ears." He heard "hambones knocking" in a pot on the stove, steam engines, tap dancers, preachers, sobs, cheers, and birdsongs. And he heard musichis father's ukelele, the family Victrola, church hymns, the community band, jitterbug music, and big bands playing on the radio, "blue notes crooning his name." So he picked up the saxophone and poured all the sounds he'd heard i...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

Authors keep trying to communicate the joys of jazz through the visual and literary medium of the picture book, and Weatherford's words and Qualls's pictures together do it surprisingly well. In four-line stanzas Weatherford lists the sounds and experiences that made young John Coltrane into the great musician he became. Some are sounds like "hambones knocking in Grandma's pots," and o...Log In or Sign Up to Read More

In four-line stanzas Weatherford lists the sounds and experiences that made young Coltrane into the great musician he became. Qualls's pa...Log In or Sign Up to Read More