Becoming Billie Holiday - Hardcover

Weatherford, Carole Boston

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159078507X ISBN 13: 9781590785072

Publisher: WordSong, 2008

Synopsis

Before the legend of Billie Holiday, there was a girl named Eleanora. In 1915, Sadie Fagan gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanora. The world, however, would know her as Billie Holiday, possibly the greatest jazz singer of all time. Eleanora's journey into legend took her through pain, poverty, and run-ins with the law. By the time she was fifteen, she knew she possessed something that could possibly change her life—a voice. Eleanora could sing. Her remarkable voice led her to a place in the spotlight with some of the era's hottest big bands. Billie Holiday sang as if she had lived each lyric, and in many ways she had. Through a sequence of raw and poignant poems, award-winning poet Carole Boston Weatherford chronicles Eleanora Fagan's metamorphosis into Billie Holiday. The author examines the singer's young life, her fight for survival, and the dream she pursued with passion in this Coretta Scott King Author Honor winner. With stunning art by Floyd Cooper, this book provides a revealing look at a cultural icon.

About this title

About the Author:

Carole Boston Weatherford is an award-winning poet and author of over two dozen books for young readers. She lives in High Point, North Carolina.

Floyd Cooper has illustrated more than sixty books for children and young adults including Miss Crandall's School for Young Ladies & Little Mises of Color by Elizabeth Alexander and Marilyn Nelson and Tough Boy Sonatas by Curtis L. Crisler. He lives in Easton, Pennsylvania.

From School Library Journal:

Starred Review. Grade 8 Up—In this fictionalized memoir, Weatherford has composed nearly 100 first-person narrative poems that detail Holiday's life from birth until age 25, the age at which she debuted her signature song, "Strange Fruit." The poems borrow their titles from Holiday's songs, a brilliant device that provides readers with a haunting built-in sound track. Weatherford's language is straightforward and accessible—almost conversational. She captures the woman's jazzy, candid voice so adroitly that at times the poems seem like they could have been lifted wholesale from Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues. Cooper's sepia-toned, nostalgic, mixed-media illustrations provide an emotional counterpoint to the text. Resembling old photographs seen through a lens of aching hindsight, they make explicit the pain that Weatherford studiously avoids giving full voice to in her poems. Although Holiday's early life was one of relentless rejection, discrimination, and poverty, the author stays true to her subject and maintains a resolute and defiant tone, albeit one tinged with regret. Prostitution, rape, jail time, and violence are mentioned, but the book ends on the proverbial high note, before the singer's drug use, alcoholism, and early death. This captivating title places readers solidly into Holiday's world, and is suitable for independent reading as well as a variety of classroom uses.—Paula Willey, Baltimore County Public Library, Towson, MD
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About this edition

• Publisher: WordSong
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 159078507X
• ISBN 13: 9781590785072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 120
• Illustrator: Cooper Floyd