Play, Louis, Play!: The True Story of a Boy and His Horn - Hardcover

Weinstein, Muriel Harris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159990375X ISBN 13: 9781599903750

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens, 2010

Synopsis

The childhood of Louis Armstrong was as fascinating as the great musician himself-and this chapter book biography tells it like never before. Play, Louis, Play! is written from the point of view of Louis' closest companion throughout his youth-his horn! In a jazz-inflected, exuberant voice, this unusual narrator tells it all, starting with the small New Orleans hock shop where little Louis bought his first trumpet for five hard-earned dollars.

As Louis goes from a street quartet to the marching band of the Colored Waif 's Home to the big sounds of New Orleans jazz clubs, author Muriel Harris Weinstein creates a moving portrait of the jazz legend. Includes a detailed author's note, glossary of jazz terms, and bibliography.

About this title

About the Author:

MURIEL HARRIS WEINSTEIN's poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Nassau Review, Kent State Review, Nexus, and many anthologies. She is the author of the picture book When Louis Armstrong Taught Me Jazz. She lives in New York.

FRANK MORRISON is a renowned fine artist whose work was featured in Our Children Can Soar. He has lent his talents to many picture books, including Alex Rodriguez's Out of the Ballpark, Queen Latifah's Queen of the Scene, and Brenda Roberts' Jazzy Miz Mozetta, for which he won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent. He lives in Georgia.

From Booklist:

With a bouncy, freewheeling tone that would make her subject proud, Weinstein tells the story of Louis Armstrongs childhood from the point of view of his first cornet, a battered old five-dollar junker he scrimped and saved to buy from a pawn shop. He grew up poor, with a sick mother and absent father, in a rough New Orleans neighborhood. But he found a passion when he heard a new kind of music: horns wah-wah-wahing, slow n sad drag-me-out blues, riffs on razzmatazz cornets, and jazzy beats of thumping piano keys. And ever the affable performer in training, he never lost his face-splitting grin, no matter how bad things got as he bounced around homes until finally landing in the Colored Waifs Home for Boys. From there, his talent shone when their band would march the streets, and eventually he got picked up by Louis Olivers band and went on to change music history. Morrisons sketchy black-and-white spot art livens up an already ebullient chapter-book biography of a true artistic pioneer. Grades 3-5. --Ian Chipman

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Childrens
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 159990375X
• ISBN 13: 9781599903750
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112
• Illustrator: Morrison Frank