A Child's Introduction to Jazz: The Musicians, Culture, and Roots of the World's Coolest Music

Get ready to swing with A Child’s Introduction to Jazz, an interactive journey into one of the richest and most soulful music genres in the world. Listen while you learn with QR codes that will connect you to the instruments and musical flair of jazz. 

Welcome to jazz! Feel the music and rhythms of all the different styles of jazz, from swing and Dixieland to the blues and bebop, with this interactive introduction to the world’s coolest music.

Author Jabari Asim will take you on the journey through the history of jazz as you discover the most important musicians and singers while hearing some really cool sounds. You’ll learn all about the roots of jazz in Africa and New Orleans and how the music traveled to different parts of the United States and around the world. Along the way you’ll meet legendary trumpeter Louis Armstrong, who shaped a new form of jazz called improvisation; pianist and bandleader Duke Ellington, who helped create the big band sound of the swing era; and the singer Billie Holiday, whose songs such as “God Bless the Child,” “Don’t Explain,” and “Lady Sings the Blues” have become jazz standards.

Listen along to the sounds of jazz by downloading music and hearing instruments such as trumpets, clarinets, trombones, and even singers scatting as they improvise melodies. With a pull-out poster showing the different instruments of jazz, A Child’s Introduction to Jazz hits the perfect beat and will have you bebopping and scatting in no time!

Jabari Asim is a professor at Emerson College, where he is director of the MFA program in Creative Writing. A recipient of the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, he is the author of several works for children. They include A Child's Introduction to African American History, Preaching to the Chickens, Whose Toes Are Those, and Me and Muhammad Ali.

Jerrard K. Polk has been drawing all his life. He won his first art contest at the age of 5 and was educated in public schools by many skilled art teachers. His love of books and poetry was encouraged by his mother, a librarian. Today, he enjoys sharing his fondness for art and entrepreneurship with children. He is greatly inspired by jazz and the dapper fashions of its innovators. In 2021, he illustrated The Story of John Lewis and Black Inventors.