Author: Andrea Davis Pinkney
Illustrator: Brian Pinkney
Genre: Picture Books
Subgenre: Fictionalized biography
Themes: African American history, doing what you love, the ability of music to connect people across different groups, art and music as a means of bettering oneself
Characters:
~Primary: Duke Ellington
~Secondary: Daisy and J.E. Ellington, Sonny Greer, Joe Nanton,
Otto Hardwick, James Miley, Billy Strayhorn,
Awards:
~Caldecott Honor Book
~Bank Street Best Book of the Year
~American Library Association Editor’s Choice: Books for Youth
~Coretta Scott King Award Honors Book
~Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children
Date of Publication: 1998
Publishing Company: Scholastic, Inc.
Summary: This book chronicles the career of Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington. Although Duke began to play piano at a young age, he gave it up for baseball until he first heard ragtime. At that point, he fell in love with music, both performing and composing. He formed a band called the Washingtonians and set out to make his fame in New York City. Duke Ellington’s big jazz style made him popular, and contributed to his long and successful career.
Recommendations: The pictures in this book are beautiful, done in Brian Pinkney’s scratchpad style. These pictures, matched to the melodic words in the text, will definitely appeal to children age four and older. The book is perfect for reading out loud, and any teacher that reads with prosody will be able to captivate the attention of young readers.
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