This collaboration spotlights the saxophone’s European birth and wide adoption by American jazz musicians.
Adolphe Sax, a 19th-century Belgian instrument maker’s son, both plays and invents instruments. Searching for a new sound—softer than a trumpet, louder than a clarinet—Adolphe tinkers and reassembles until his masterpiece is ready. Belgium’s arbiters reject the new instrument, and Adolphe moves to Paris. While French tastemakers initially pan it, the composer Hector Berlioz champions “le saxophon,” opining, “It cries, sighs, and dreams.” After hard-won integration into French military bands, other European nations adopt it, too. Napoleon III loses France’s war in Mexico accompanied by the instrument’s wails. Florencio Ramos, a musician in a Mexican cavalry band, obtains a sax and settles in New Orleans in 1884. The signature sound of the rechristened “saxophone” spreads there and beyond, inseparable from jazz’s early permutations. (Cline-Ransome avers that after Sidney Bechet picks up the sax, he forsakes his clarinet.) A final spread summarizes jazz’s singular predisposition to musical contagion: “Coleman Hawkins heard Sidney play. / And Lester Young heard Coleman play. / And Charlie Parker heard Lester play.” While the anecdotal narrative adroitly portrays Sax’s perseverance as an innovator, the segue to American jazz gets shorter shrift. Cline-Ransome admirably amends this: Endpapers, a jacket poster, and spot illustrations celebrate over 20 diverse saxophone greats. Rich, sepia-toned spreads showcase the saxophone’s shining complexity.
Engagingly links the jazz saxophone with its European roots. (Informational picture book. 4-8)Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3702-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
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Diwali, the festival of lights, a five-day celebration that has many different forms, is celebrated in different ways across India and in many other countries.
This board book cursorily presents the different rituals associated with this celebration of the Hindu New Year, including getting the house ready to welcome Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth; decorating the house with rangoli and diyas; and celebrating with family, friends, fireworks, and good food. The text is simple and gives only very basic information. “On the fifth and final day of Diwali, we celebrate brothers and sisters. The lifelong bond between siblings is special, and we honor that.” The illustrations show four different sets of siblings celebrating each other in different ways, none of which are mentioned in the text, making it difficult for younger readers to understand the complexity of the celebration. Sreenivasan’s illustrations are colorful, detailed, and authentic, and they carry the book. They feature happy and smiling dark-haired people with a range of skin tones, diverse in ethnicity and dress. In bright, vivid colors, intergenerational families and friends from different regions come alive, dressed up in their colorful best, celebrating and enjoying the festival together in different ways. The board format of this title does not match the age range and conceptual level of the text.
Amid inconsistencies of format and information, the illustrations end up giving the most clarity about this festival. (Board book. 4-8)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-1990-2
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS
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The Celebrate the World series spotlights Lunar New Year.
This board book blends expository text and first-person-plural narrative, introducing readers to the holiday. Chau’s distinctive, finely textured watercolor paintings add depth, transitioning smoothly from a grand cityscape to the dining room table, from fantasies of the past to dumplings of the present. The text attempts to provide a broad look at the subject, including other names for the celebration, related cosmology, and historical background, as well as a more-personal discussion of traditions and practices. Yet it’s never clear who the narrator is—while the narrative indicates the existence of some consistent, monolithic group who participates in specific rituals of celebration (“Before the new year celebrations begin, we clean our homes—and ourselves!”), the illustrations depict different people in every image. Indeed, observances of Lunar New Year are as diverse as the people who celebrate it, which neither the text nor the images—all of the people appear to be Asian—fully acknowledges. Also unclear is the book’s intended audience. With large blocks of explication on every spread, it is entirely unappealing for the board-book set, and the format may make it equally unattractive to an older, more appropriate audience. Still, readers may appreciate seeing an important celebration warmly and vibrantly portrayed.
Lovely illustrations wasted on this misguided project. (Board book. 4-8)Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5344-3303-8
Page Count: 24
Publisher: Little Simon/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
Categories: CHILDREN'S HISTORY | CHILDREN'S HOLIDAYS & CELEBRATIONS
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