Charlie Parker Played Be Bop

by Chris Raschka, Chris Raschka (Illustrator)

Overview

Ever hear of Charlie Parker? The great jazz saxophone player? If you have or if you haven't, it's okay. Look at this board book and you'll hear Charlie Parker; you'll hear music in your mind. "Be bop. Fisk, fisk. Lollipop. Boomba, boomba." Look. That's Charlie swinging and spinning all over the pages. And that's Charlie's cat, waiting, waiting for him to come home...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780531070956
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/1997
Edition description:	Library Edition
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	134,268
Product dimensions:	9.25(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.09(d)
Lexile:	AD250L (what's this?)
Age Range:	3 - 7 Years

About the Author

Chris Raschka is the Caldecott Award-winning illustrator of A Ball for Daisy and The Hello, Goodbye Window. He is also the illustrator of Yo! Yes? (which won a Caldecott Honor), Sourpuss and Sweetie Pie, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, and Farmy Farm. He lives with his wife and son in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

Regardless of whether they've heard of jazz or Charlie Parker, young readers will bop to the pulsating beat of this sassy picture book. In a daring attempt to capture the raw energy of Parker's music (and in language recalling the verbal theatrics of Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault), Raschka combines a text that's as lean as a poem and as mean as a blues refrain (``Charlie Parker played be bop. / Charlie Parker played no trombone. / The music sounded like be bop. / Barbecue that last leg bone'') with vigorously skewed illustrations gleaming with sly wit. Even the typeface joins in the fun, as italics and boldface strut and swing across the pages. Those in the know will enjoy the inside jokes (the pages, for example, are decorated with birds, after Parker's nickname); young and old alike will find this a read-aloud that's hard to resist. And that's no jive. Ages 3-6. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Popular picture books now appearing in the sturdy format and board book originals gather together in a variety of favorite subjects. Chris Raschka's Charlie Parker Played Be Bop makes the transition to board gracefully, with its one line of text per spread and its bold graphics of the stunning saxophonist. PW wrote of the original picture book published in 1992, "Regardless of whether they've heard of jazz or Charlie Parker, young readers will bop to the pulsating beat of this sassy picture book." Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

PreS-Gr 2-- Despite its appealing, rhythmic cadence, this book doesn't evoke the music of Charlie Parker. The watercolor and charcoal pencil illustrations are funky and funny, but sometimes confounding. In particular, the characterization of Parker is overly stylized, resulting in a caricature rather than a character. The story line--of the musician's cat waiting for him to come home--will be lost on young readers; in fact, it will be apparent only to those reading the flap copy. Nicely designed, the layout makes effective use of different typefaces and appropriate sound words (``The music sounded like be bop . . . overshoes, overshoes, overshoes, o, . . . ''), but the nonsense phrases only increase the general confusion (``Barbeque that last leg bone . . . .''), as do some of the illustrations, particularly a boot with feet that ``hip hops'' through the pages. There is also an upside-down illustration of Parker that looks more like a mistake than a variation on the theme. This is an intriguing, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to illuminate jazz for young readers, who would be served far better by books like Thacher Hurd's upbeat Mama Don't Allow (HarperCollins, 1984) or Rachel Isadora's Ben's Trumpet (Greenwillow, 1979). --Cyrisse Jaffee, Newton Public Schools, MA

School Library Journal