Publishers Weekly Review
| Lewis's (Down the Road) action-filled watercolors animate a New Orleans neighborhood in Shaik's (Melitte) introduction to a turn-of-the-century tradition: the "second line" of dancers who followed the legendary jazz bands. Shaik is at her best when describing the joy in the movement the music evokes: "Hips shake to the pavement,/ shoulders shimmy up with the melody/ like fish leaping from rivers./ To the beat of the drums, backbones slink." But too often the text's pacing trips up with inconsistent and awkward jumps from prose to rhyme (two children "greet [their] neighborsÄ/ old folks and teenagers,/ and fathers and mothers/ who dropped their pounding hammers/ and stopped cleaning mid-sweepÄ/ to meet the jazz band that calls with its beat"). Lewis, however, visually documents the shifting moods: readers will feel the anticipation as the musicians round the corner of a red-shuttered clapboard house onto an indigo avenue, as well as the hush of a moment of silence as Lewis shifts to an aerial view of bowed heads. His shimmering paintings do more than the rambling poem to capture the impromptu vibrancy and delight of children and adults alike as they strike up behind the band. Ages 4-8. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved |
School Library Journal Review
| K-Gr 3-Open this book and be transported to the Tremé section of New Orleans where two children and their neighbors drop everything to join the "second line" of a jazz marching band. With hips a-wiggling and hands reaching to the sky, their feet answer to the marching orders of the band until everyone stops, momentarily, to remember the long history of this "ceremony of dancing." Shaik explains that in New Orleans, "we have music the way other folks talk." Her words are the language of dance-"shimmy," "leap," "snap," "shake," "slink"-but under them lay the deeply felt emotions of community, heritage, and tradition. Her descriptions offer readers a vivid impression of the sounds of the band, the sounds of the street, and the seductive power of jazz. Full of rhythm and joy, Lewis's shimmering watercolors depict the folks waiting anxiously for the band to appear, the musicians and their instruments, and the "march" or dance through the streets as everyone joins in. Each scene is faced with a page of text layed out on white and framed with a thin line of changing color. Team this up with Chris Raschka's Charlie Parker Played Bebop (Orchard, 1992), George Ella Lyon's Five Live Bongos (Scholastic, 1994), or Thacher Hurd's Mama Don't Allow (Harper, 1984) and make some music of your own.-Karen Breen, New Visions for Public Schools, New York City (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Booklist Review
| Ages 4^-8. Like Medearis and Ransome's Rum-a-Tum-Tum (1997), this is a celebration of the marching bands of New Orleans. Poetic words and stunning, light-filled watercolors express the rhythm and feeling of individual people who play in the band and of those who listen hard and dance and follow the musicians as they wind through the streets of the Tremeneighborhood. Shaik is the author of the fine novel Melitte (1997). Here, there is no real story beyond the young girl's first-person account of how she and her brother hear the music and hurry to join the gathering crowd, but her casual, singing words dramatize what she says: "We have music the way other folks talk." In a fascinating author's note, Shaik gives the background about the "second-liners" who have passed down their dance and call-and-response patterns through generations. Lewis' paintings are some of the best he has done; both relaxed and fervent, they show people whose music brings them together. --Hazel Rochman |
Horn Book Review
| Two children join in a parade following a jazz band through their New Orleans neighborhood. The figurative language, blank verse, and realistic watercolor illustrations help convey the lively spirit of the event. The story is thin, but the pride in culture and heritage is evident in art and text. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. |
Kirkus Review
| Shaik's clever, agile celebration of New Orleans jazz is a compact cultural history of the great city where music found feet. The poem starts with a jazz band forming: ""The drum's rhythms tell us/we will have a parade/even though it's not a holiday,"" says the young African-American girl who narrates. As kids and adults tumble into the streets to take a place in the second line--a sinuous, shimmying group dancing behind the band, ready to respond to its every call--Shaik conveys the musicality of the event: ""The band warms up/with odd, jumping notes/that don't seem to match./But then they mend into harmony."" Lewis's handsome watercolors smoothly wed word to image; as the parade winds down, there is a delicious aura of celebration in the air, and lingering on the page. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission. |
