A vivid interpretation of the life of a remarkable musician perfect for “anyone who’s ever struggled to express themselves.”
A mostly wordless illustrated tribute to a celebrated yet doomed jazz musician.
In this unconventional graphic biography, Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Chantler chronicles the life of legendary 1920s musician Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke (1903-1931). Calling him the “unlikeliest of jazz heroes,” the author re-creates the musician’s life through a series of cartoon panels that relate events from previous biographies, varying in interpretation and reliability. Chantler’s drawings chronicle Beiderbecke’s childhood in World War–era Iowa, where he was raised by critical, conservative parents. The story then moves to his boyhood, when his love of music and harmonic jazz melodies blossomed, particularly after hearing it live from a passing river steamboat. Though his schooling suffered, he matured as a mostly self-taught musician, scoring gigs with local bands and garnering regional notoriety. Inspired by Louis Armstrong, Bix rose to prominence as an outstanding jazz pianist and cornetist. However, chronic alcohol dependency would lead to his death at age 28. Chantler’s treatment of the musician’s life is distinctly creative, capturing moods through facial expressions and tightly detailed panels. In the brief introduction, the author readily admits that several scenes in the book are “apocryphal at best,” but he notes that the silent nature of its contents and the manner in which Bix’s life is portrayed reflects the struggle of many hypercreative, misunderstood artists (himself included) to express themselves in terms outside of the art they create. His experimental visualization of musical rhythms in scenes depicting Bix’s career high points is a marvel of imaginative illustrated narration. Chantler poignantly notes that the book was drawn during a devastating upheaval in his own personal life and that sketching it served as a “life raft for my battered sense of self.” This biographical storybook is a unique keepsake for jazz fans.
A vivid interpretation of the life of a remarkable musician perfect for “anyone who’s ever struggled to express themselves.”Pub Date: April 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9078-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Gallery 13/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered...
The incredible true story of three Jewish women who survived the Holocaust.
Priska, Rachel, and Anka were married Jewish women in their early 20s when the Nazis took control of Europe. Like millions of other Jews, they were forced to give up their normal lives, all of their belongings, and their homes. Shuttled into ghettos and then off to one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz II-Birkenau, they suffered through the Nazis’ increasing atrocities. But these three women all held a secret: they were pregnant. They were moved from Auschwitz and ended up in Mauthausen, another notorious death camp. With facing the most horrible conditions imaginable, all three gave birth right before the Allies accepted Germany’s surrender. In this meticulously detailed account, Holden (Haatchi & Little B: The Inspiring True Story of One Boy and His Dog, 2014, etc.) compiles an enormous amount of information from interviews, letters, historical records, and personal visits to the sites where this story unfolded. The graphic history places readers in the moment and provides a sense of the enduring power of love that Priska, Rachel, and Anka had for their unborn children and for the husbands they so desperately hoped to see after the war. Even though it occurred more than 70 years ago, the story’s truth is so chillingly portrayed that it seems as if it could have happened recently. These three women and their infants survived in the face of death, and, Holden writes, “their babies went on to have babies of their own and create a second and then a third generation, all of whom continue to live their lives in defiance of Hitler’s plan to erase them from history and from memory.”
An engrossing, intense, and highly descriptive narrative chronicling the ghastly conditions three pregnant women suffered through at the hands of the Nazis.Pub Date: May 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-237025-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 28, 2015
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