JAZZ/MODULE 5/ HOPKINS AWARD POETRY

Walter Dean Myers Illustrated by Christopher Myers.2006. Jazz. New York. Holiday House. ISBN 978-0-8234-1545-8.

Jazz is written by Walter Dean Myers and illustrated by Christopher Myers. This father and son team has created a wonderful and educational book that explores a wide variety of jazz forms. Readers will experience the explosion of color and rhythm of jazz with each poem that they read from this book. This book is a Hopkins Award Poetry book.  The Hopkins Award Poetry is granted annually to an anthology of poetry or a single volume poem published for children in the previous calendar year by a living American poet or anthologist.   

The book starts out with the blues with a poem titled “Oh, Miss Kitty”.  Fifteen poems go through the musical history of jazz.  The book opens with two pages answering, “What is jazz?”  This section covers the major element of jazz and the history of jazz.  Opening the book up like this is very informative for children and provides a great teaching tool for parents, teachers, and librarians.  Legendary jazz musicians are written about such as Louie Armstrong.  There are two font types used in this book to highlight and illustrate the rhyming schemes and lively words for the reader.  Each poem is accompanied by a wonderful illustration that brings feeling and expression of jazz to life.  When you read this book you really feel the mood of jazz. The book ends with an appended glossary of jazz terms.  This is a great tool for children to look up words that they are unfamiliar with.  These words will expand the linguistic abilities and vocabulary of readers throughout each poem.  Children will learn jazz terms and the history of jazz in a fun way. This age group of children may not be very familiar with Jazz so this book opens up an entire new musical aspect for them.           

Every single one of these poems is of consistent quality.  Each one has a different jazz feel.  Poems will stimulate a variety of thoughts and emotions when children read this book. The poems cover the struggle writes have when composing songs, and the up lifting experiencing when playing a jazz piece.  These poems are not sentimental in any way.  Children will appreciate the new language offered in these poems and the history timeline that they travel through while reading the poems.

The sole purpose of this book is introducing a new form of music to children.  This would be a great book for a music teacher to read.  The only thing is, only black musicians are pictured in this book which is not a true look at jazz musicians. The illustrations in this book are absolutely wonderful and are so vibrantly colored.  It reminded me of New Orleans when I read it with all the colors coming together.  This book is truly an upbeat book that will appeal to all children. 

I am sharing with you the first poem in this book.  It really explains what jazz is and you can feel the jazz rhythm behind it when you read it out loud.  I hope you all enjoy it. 

Jazz

Start with rhythm

Start with the heart

Drumming in tongues

Along the Nile

A black man’s drum

Speaks

Love

Start with

RHYTHM

Start with

The HEART

Works songs

Gospel

Triumph

Despair

Voices

Lifted

From the soul

Classroom/Library Connection

Recommended audience: Ages 8 and up

Before reading: Before reading this poem I would play a sample of jazz music.  Some children may not be familiar with this type of music and I think being able to hear it before reading the book would make the poems more meaningful for them. 

During reading: I would read the poem slowly so they can truly appreciate the poem and notice the rhythm of the poem and see if they can hear how it is intended to sound like jazz. After reading it once as a class we would go over what elements make a jazz song.  

Reread the poem: After we have learned some information about jazz I would reread the poem to them and see if it makes more sense to them or if they get a different feeling from it.  As a class we would point out the jazz elements in the poem and see if they compare or are the same elements that a song would have.   

After reading: I will have lots of different jazz CDs available for children to check out and take home with them.  I would like each child to select their favorite piece of jazz and write why?  What made this piece of music stand out to them?  I will have them bring their assignment back to class and share it with the other students.  They will find out if other students selected their favorite and students may find they have several different favorite jazz pieces.