This creative, impassioned, in-your-face biography is as on fire as Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.
Smith gives light, air, and sound to the life story of an unparalleled musician who moved to his own rhythms.
Arranged in five multipage “verses” of poetry with an “outro” and “interlude” to reflect Hendrix’s blues, this fascinating biography offers a feast for the ear as Smith tells of Hendrix’s childhood rife with parental conflict, his mother’s traumatic departure, his father’s denigration of his music, and Hendrix’s need to escape a life of exclusion and ostracism. After flying with the Army’s Screaming Eagles, Hendrix often found himself at odds with his bands because of his individualism and drive to play solo. Smith describes him as “a git-tar magician, / a sonic tactician, / a Picasso with a pick / painting in the blues tradition.” Rodriguez’s artwork uses heavily saturated reds, yellows, and (appropriately) blues to create scenes that reveal how music-possessed Hendrix was. Whether illustrating a young Hendrix’s playing a broom as if it were a guitar or plucking “the fireworks exploding in his head,” Rodriguez’s gritty, oil-based woodblock paintings effectively capture Hendrix’s passion, drive, and genius. Smith describes wanting to conclude with a “moment of triumph…to celebrate the unique individual who inspired me.” And he does: With his “show-stopping tricks / …behind-the-back, between-the-legs, / teeth-plucking licks,” Hendrix set his guitar on fire and “showed the world / how to kiss the sky.” (This book was reviewed digitally.)
This creative, impassioned, in-your-face biography is as on fire as Jimi Hendrix’s guitar. (author's note, biographical timeline, personal playlist, discography, references) (Picture book/biography. 8-14)Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-8234-4333-8
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Neal Porter/Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish.
The dreary prospect of spending a lifetime making caskets instead of wonderful inventions prompts a young orphan to snatch up his little sister and flee. Where? To the circus, of course.
Fortunately or otherwise, John and 6-year-old Page join up with Boz—sometime human cannonball for the seedy Wandering Wayfarers and a “vertically challenged” trickster with a fantastic gift for sowing chaos. Alas, the budding engineer barely has time to settle in to begin work on an experimental circus wagon powered by chicken poop and dubbed (with questionable forethought) the Autopsy. The hot pursuit of malign and indomitable Great-Aunt Beauregard, the Coggins’ only living relative, forces all three to leave the troupe for further flights and misadventures. Teele spins her adventure around a sturdy protagonist whose love for his little sister is matched only by his fierce desire for something better in life for them both and tucks in an outstanding supporting cast featuring several notably strong-minded, independent women (Page, whose glare “would kill spiders dead,” not least among them). Better yet, in Boz she has created a scene-stealing force of nature, a free spirit who’s never happier than when he’s stirring up mischief. A climactic clutch culminating in a magnificently destructive display of fireworks leaves the Coggin sibs well-positioned for bright futures. (Illustrations not seen.)
A sly, side-splitting hoot from start to finish. (Adventure. 11-13)Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-234510-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Walden Pond Press/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)
Sucked into "business" with a crooked classmate, bowling fanatic Lamar Washington makes good money faking his skills, but when a disruptive prank reveals his new friend Billy’s duplicity, he realizes how wrong it was to aim to be “the smoothest baddest dude” in Coffin, Ind.
This refreshing first novel is told in the first person with plenty of snappy dialogue by a smart African-American middle-schooler whose asthma has kept him out of the usual sports and whose older brother, a basketball star, consistently taunts him. Lamar’s new friendship threatens both a longstanding one and a promising new relationship with a girl. Tension mounts as Lamar is drawn further into an unsavory gambling world, realizing that his cheating is wrong but thrilled to have the cash to buy a Bubba Sanders bowling ball. A final, seriously physical fight with his brother leads to climactic arrests. The drab rigidity of Camp Turnaround, where Billy is incarcerated, contrasts with the excitement of the bowling alley Lamar loves. His grounding and community service seem appropriate. His understanding of the consequences of his prank fire alarm, both for his brother and for his basketball-mad small town, comes slowly and realistically, and the solution of his family issues is satisfying.
This stands out for its unusual setting and smooth integration of friendship and family concerns. (Fiction. 10-14)Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-06-199272-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2011
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