Module 5: Hopkins Award Poetry - Jazz

Bibliographic Information
Myers, Walter Dean. Ills. by Christopher Myers. JAZZ. New York, NY: Holiday House. ISBN: 9780823415458.

Summary and Analysis
With the focus on jazz music and the feelings in stirs in people, this collection addresses main elements of poetry as well. Poems are descriptive, colorful (even with text alternating colors), and rhythmic. Fonts change to indicate different speakers which would assist in shared reading between children. Poems address influential jazz musicians, influential times in society, and the general influence of jazz music. Poems take on different tones and images through subject and writing style. In Miss Kitty repetition is smooth, much like a lyric, while Stride focuses more on the beat of jazz, much like a dance. These poems range in feeling and emotion. The emphasis is on sounds and color, whether changing color in text, illustrations, or unspoken color and flare that comes out in the poem.

Myers' illustrations are beautiful, colorful, and flow much like one would imagine jazz notes flowing through a room. They take on the style of elongated features that is often used in African American art and it makes these illustrations more adult than those typically found in children's books. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the illustrations flow with dancing people on a page or exaggerate the instruments and will help readers notice a different kind of style to this collection. This style can then be linked to the different style of music known as jazz. The poems are informative and are a great introduction to the genre.

The topic of jazz is expanded upon by the amazing, and award honor, illustrations, which at times grab the reader’s focus more than the text. Each illustration is fitting and appropriate to the corresponding poem whether in peaceful relaxation as in Blue Creeps In or the intense focus of Piano.

Highlighted Poem

Twenty-Finger Jack

Well, the walls are shaking,
And the ceilings coming down
‘Cause twenty-finger Jack
Has just come back to town
The keyboard’s jumping,
and the music’s going round
and round
If he had any sense,
he left it in the lost-and-found
Here he go

Be ba boodie, be ba boodie, boo
Be ba boodie, be ba ba ba, boodie, boo

There’s a steady beat walking,
and the melody’s talking, too
If you ain’t moving.
there must be something wrong with you
My knees don’t like it,
but my feet just got to dance
My heels can’t follow,
but my toes will take a chance

Be ba boodie, be ba boodie, boo
Be ba boodie, be ba ba ba, boodie, boo

Drop your blues,
and throw away that frown
‘Cause twenty-finger Jack
has just come back to town

Connections

The imagery of this collection could be brought to attention for poetry lessons or art lessons. The poems offer the sounds of jazz as well as the emotions often experienced when listening to live music. Connections could be made to recordings of jazz with children writing what they feel when they listen to the music or draw what they hear in music or other poems. Children could also take their favorite poems and put them to songs like simple nursery rhymes tunes to see how words take on a different focus when used with song. Also, students could listen to popular music for poetry elements to bring the literary focus to modern music.