Hopkins Award Poetry:

Myers, Walter Dean. Jazz. Illus. Christopher Myers. New York: Holiday House, 2006. Print. ISBN 9780823421732.


In a picture book format, Walter Myers and Christopher Myers, a father son collaboration team provides an explosion of movement and color, generating the reader’s movement. The father, Walter, the poet, composed fifteen poems that celebrate jazz music as the son, Christopher, the illustrator, produced expressive painting that focuses on the energy of the poems. The jazz sound is heard as you read through the collection, such as the drumming of African rhythms leading into a celebration of Louis Armstrong, an evocation of stride piano, a recreation of a New Orleans jazz funeral and a three-part improvisation. All of these activities are focusing on the subject in the poem they accompany. The feeling of celebration surrounds the reader through rhyme, while sensory imagery such as “ocean rhyme,” “feeling,” “preaching,” “fire,” “heat,” and “thumming” makes a connection with the reader.

Christopher Myers uses bold colors to create the strong jazz sound in the illustrations. The action-filled and colorful cover invites anyone who sees the book to open it. The use of lines, angles, and facial expressions add a visual complement to the jazz sounds and helps the reader hear the sound and keep the beat just like the impressionistic type illustrations. Many of the illustrations are distorted creating a focus on playfulness, intensity, and energy. The essential elements of the illustrations are enlarged and are detailed such as fingers on a piano, playing a flute, strumming strings, and held out. Occasionally cursive script emulating jazz movement focuses the readers to the jazz in the poem’s rhyme.

There is no Table of Content. The poems are arranged as a “jam session” celebrating all types of jazz including swing, ragtime, and be-bop. A detailed introduction, and a jazz glossary and timeline provide background knowledge of jazz. Jazz has acquired the following honors and awards: Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor, ALA Notable Children’s Book, Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, Publishers Weekly’s 100 Best Books of the Year, Kirkus Reviews Editor’s Choice Booklist Editors’ Choice, Booklist Top Ten in Black History, A Book Links Best New Book for the Classroom, Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Text, IRA Notable Book for a Global Society 2007, Hans Christian Andersen Award, Illustrator Honor, New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing, NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work—Poetry, and Parenting Mom-Tested Book of the Year.

The enjoyable and engaging collection provides a fun and entertaining mood and upbeat emotions as it enriches the reader’s knowledge of jazz through the interesting topics and natural appeal. The Myers duo captures the spirit of jazz in this collection by making the reader want to move as they combine history, music, art, and poetry.

Poem for Library Lesson:

“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
Work songs
Gospel
Triumph
Despair
Voices
Lifted
From the soul

Activity:

Read the poem and discuss the meaning of the poem with respect to it being the first poem in the collection. Review point of view, 1st and 3rd person using the point of view box (outline of a square using tape on the floor, inside the box – 1st person [I, me, my] outside the box 2nd person).

Discuss the point of view the poet uses in the poem. Ask students to support their point of view answer with specific examples in the poem. The illustrator uses which point of view? Ask students to support their point of view answer with specific examples shown in the illustrations.

After listening to jazz and with jazz music playing in the background, he students write a poem reflecting the message they hear in the music. Review how the students can communicate rhyme, pauses, emotion, and movement using white space, stanzas, word choices, font, and punctuation. Students volunteer to share their work upon completion.