MUSIC, MUSIC FOR EVERYONE

You might just well-up from the emotional charge of Williams' successor to A Chair for My Mother and Something Special for Me. It's the luminous tremor of the pictures, combined with what happens, that gives this a special vibrance. Grandma is sick, so the big, rose-print chair in the living room is often empty. Upstairs in bed, she likes it when Rosa and her friends play music for her: "Leora plays the drums, Mae plays the flute, Jenny plays the fiddle and I play my accordion." Worried because the big money jar is empty (maybe, says Mae, "because your mother has to spend all her money to take care of your grandma"), Rosa recalls her mother telling her about her other grandma, who played the accordion at parties and weddings, and was paid. Grandma's all for it. The Oak Street Band is formed; gets help, practices. And their first job is to play at a party for Leora's great-grandparents, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their comer market. (Now it's run by Leora's mother, who plays the radio. "But for the party she said there just had to be live music.") The children are first shy, then they play and play "like a real band"—while a whirl of dancers young and old fills two wordless pages. The book closes in quiet exultation, with Rosa putting her share of the evening's money into the big jar. Brimming to look at—see Grandma calling out the window, with big snowflakes in her hair—and heart-catching, sometimes, to listen to.