Perma-Bound

*Starred Review* It is a melancholy reality that jazz is no longer considered popular music and that the great names of jazz history are no longer on the lips of young people. The Dillons would like to take a small step to change that with this engaging picture book, which harkens back to a time when hearing live jazz on a Saturday night brought communities together to ease away the strains of the work week with wailing saxophones and syncopated rhythms. The mythical Saturday night posited here—and brought to life through brief, “toe-tappin poems and paintings that seem to swing off the pages—brings together an all-time great band featuring Charlie Parker and John Coltrane on saxophones, Miles Davis on trumpet, Thelonious Monk on piano, Max Roach on drums, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Ella Fitzgerald doing the vocals. Each artist is featured in his or her own two-page spread; taken together, the art blends blues, greens, purples, and golds into a mix that communicates both the music’s heat and its mellow side. Equally vibrant are the paintings of the audience, wrapped up in the sound and sharing the energy. For introducing young listeners to jazz, pair this with Walter Dean Myers and Christopher Myers’ Jazz (2006), which does for New Orleans–style jazz what the Dillons do for the more modern bebop sound. Biographical notes on the musicians are appended. K-Gr 4-"Ladies and gents, what a jam this will be--/an evening of jazz immortality!" And how! John Coltrane and Charlie Parker on sax, Thelonious Monk on piano, vocals by Ella Fitzgerald, trumpet by Miles Davis, drums by Max Roach, Stanley Clarke on bass! The audience is captivated and carried along on "a river of melody sketched in dim light" in this rhythmic tribute to traditional jazz. The spreads, graphic-styled paintings rendered in deep matte tones with a suggestion of collage, switch between stage and audience, with swirling background patterns portraying the flow of music. The grow-ing excitement of this jazz extravaganza is perfectly complemented by the joyful rhyming text: "Repeat on the beat/when Max Roach keeps the heat/on his drums, rhythm thrums,/makes you jump in your seat." The first track on the accompa-nying CD is an introduction to jazz. Each instrument in the book is highlighted individually, followed by the second track, a recording of the original song "Jazz on a Saturday Night." The Dillons' lyrics comprise part of the book's text, and the number features each of the instruments riffing solo and then the ensemble jamming together. The book opens with a one-page overview of jazz and concludes with biographical snapshots of the featured musicians. A splendid read-aloud/listen-along multisensory title, Jazz is an interdisciplinary workhorse, perfect for music, art, movement, poetry, so-cial studies, and language-arts classes. Pair it with the Dillons' Rap a Tap Tap: Here's Bojangles, Think of That (Live Oak Media, 2005) for a rhythmic explosion of sight, sound, and word.-Joyce Adams Burner, Hillcrest Library, Prairie Village, KS Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.