Welcome to Jazz: A Swing-Along Celebration of America's Music, Featuring "When the Saints Go Marching In"

by Carolyn Sloan, Jessica Gibson (Illustrator)

Overview

AN INTERACTIVE, SWING-ALONG PICTURE BOOK—WITH 12 SOUND CHIPS!
 
 Are you ready to swing? Discover the wonders of jazz: How to get in the groove, what it means to play a solo, and the joy of singing along in a call-and-response.
 
In this interactive swing-along picture book with 12 sound chips, you’ll hear the instruments of jazz—the rhythm section with its banjo, drums, and tuba, and the leads, like the clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. And you’ll hear singers scat, improvising melodies with nonsense syllables like be-bop and doo-we-ah!
 
Along the way, you’ll learn how this unique African American art form started in New Orleans, and how jazz changed over time as innovative musicians like King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Billie Holiday added their own ideas to it. 
 
Press the buttons to hear the band, the rhythms, and the singer calling out: “OH WHEN THE SAINTS—oh when the saints…”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781523506880
Publisher:	Workman Publishing Company
Publication date:	10/15/2019
Pages:	32
Sales rank:	159,362
Product dimensions:	10.10(w) x 11.50(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Carolyn Sloan is the author of Welcome to the Symphony and Welcome to Jazz. A music educator, songwriter, and musician, she writes music for theater, television, and children. She the founder of a new online education company, TeachMe TV.  She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. 

Editorial Reviews

11/04/2019

In this interactive volume, readers meet three cool cats (literal felines) at a jazz club, where one explains the art form to the others. This setup allows Sloan to offer a relatively comprehensive introduction to jazz, from its origins as “an African American art form” to its signature sounds, toggling between the cats’ dialogue and text-block explanations. A push-button side panel with 12 musical features plays instrument sounds (trumpet, double bass) as well as stylistic elements (scatting, improvisation), and each is called out in the text. Gibson’s swooping, stylized forms have a retro-mod flair, showing black and brown musicians performing for the trio of wide-eyed cats. Supplemental material delves deeper into jazz’s roots: “Out of terrible hardship and the unjust cruelty of slavery came beauty and innovation in the form of a new kind of music and the brilliant musicians who played it.” Ages 4–8. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"A swinging invitation to get into the groove." —Kirkus Reviews

". . . a five-star performance from start to finish." —BookPage

"Welcome to Jazz is a perfect entree for a young person's journey into the wonders of jazz. Carolyn Sloan's insightfulness into the basics—rhythm, sound, improvisation—makes concepts clear while providing a fun and exciting adventure into the exploration of the art form. Highly recommended for children of all ages."
—Justin DiCiccio, jazz performer, composer, pedagogue, and Associate Dean/Chair Emeritus of The Manhattan School of Music’s Jazz Arts Program

From the Publisher

2019-10-09
A slide through the foundational instruments and elements of jazz, with push-button sound clips.

Three cats (of the feline sort) get hep ("This music makes me wanna dance in my seat!" "That's because it's got a great groove." "It sure does. Wait! What's a groove?") as they take in a jazz combo on a club stage and then follow the music out onto the street. Sloan (Welcome to the Symphony, 2015) fills in the bass line with historical notes, covering the development of jazz as "an African American art form" from early days in New Orleans' Congo Square to the arrival of Louis Armstrong, and explaining important terms such as "improvisation" and "scat singing." Prompts in the narrative lead readers to a dozen short clips taken from an original recording of "When the Saints Go Marching In." Buttons that trigger the clips are lined up to the side and produce isolated flurries from select instruments, a snatch of clarinet solo, a bit of voiced scat, and a few seconds of the main theme as an effervescent instrumental and also with call-and-response lyrics. A portrait gallery in one cartoon illustration that gives nods to five early jazz greats (all, like the fictive modern band on stage, African American) is backed up at the end with a limited but at least somewhat more expansive playlist of classic tracks for further listening, though caregivers who want to introduce kids to bebop and other later styles are on their own.

A swinging invitation to get into the groove. (glossary) (Informational novelty. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews