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Summary
Summary
Miles can't sleep.
Taps his toes,
snaps his fingers,
can't stop thinking of ways
to make music his own.
As a young musician, Miles Davis heard music everywhere. This biography explores the childhood and early career of a jazz legend as he finds his voice and shapes a new musical sound. Follow his progression from East St. Louis to rural Arkansas, from Julliard and NYC jazz clubs to the prestigious Newport Jazz Festival. Rhythmic free verse imbues his story with musicality and gets readers in the groove. Music teachers and jazz fans will appreciate the beats and details throughout, and Miles' drive to constantly listen, learn, and create will inspire kids to develop their own voice.
With evocative illustrations, this glimpse into Miles Davis' life is sure to captivate music lovers young and old.
Author Notes
Kathleen Cornell Berman is an assembler and sculptor of words and found objects. A former elementary school teacher, she now spends her time writing, creating art, and frequenting jazz concerts. This is her debut picture book. She lives in Queens, New York, with her husband.
Keith Henry Brown, debut picture book illustrator, got his start drawing super heroes, but jazz musicians like Miles Davis have always been heroes to him. A graduate of the High School of Art and Design as well as Parsons School of Design, he combined his love of art and jazz as the creative director at Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has designed and illustrated promotional graphics and several jazz album covers. Born and raised in Staten Island, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-7-From a very early age, Davis was captivated by the music and rhythmic sounds around him. Nestled up to the radio to hear jazz legends like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Davis longed to make his own kind of music. For his 13th birthday, he received a trumpet and never looked back, though his rise to fame was not easy. He faced discouragement in his ability to make the trumpet produce the particular sounds he wanted and exhaustion from attending Julliard while also playing in night clubs in order to learn from other musicians. His big break came when Dizzy Gillespie left Charlie Parker's band and Davis stepped in. Bebop wasn't enough for him; he yearned to develop his own style, eventually forming his own band to play music that was "cool, relaxed, with a lighter, lyrical feel." At this point in the narrative, the author references the "dark days" when Davis nearly gave up his craft, but no details are provided. The book ends after Davis receives an invitation to play at the Newport Jazz Festival where he stuns the massive audience. Within the text, the word listened is italicized every time it is used to emphasize how intently Davis engaged with the sounds he heard. The author effectively sprinkles in Davis's own words in larger, darker font. The lyrical prose is written in short stanzas that beg to be read aloud. Brown's art is warm, stylized realism that, along with the text, conveys the earnestness and enthusiasm of Davis's beginnings. -VERDICT A great introductory biography to this musician's beginnings through age 29.- -Maggie Chase, Boise State University, ID © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Cornell Berman's sensitive story of Miles Davis recounts his formative influences and development as a musician. With prudently placed line breaks, Berman's writing mimics the cadence of jazz, and the text emphasizes the often frustrating process of mastering an instrument: "Overcome with exhaustion/ yet feeling exhilarated,/ he knows he's moving ahead,/ away from bebop,/ to create a new way/ to play his trumpet." Brown's pen-and-ink and watercolor art conveys both the precision and fluidity of the musician's style. Quotations from Davis are included throughout ("The way you change and help music is by trying to invent new ways to play"), while author and illustrator notes more clearly place Davis within the context of music history. Ages 8-12. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In this picture-book biography, Bermans free verse picks up on the sounds of Miles Daviss (19261991) childhood: big band music floating down the Mississippi River. Horses hooves pounding on dirt roads during Arkansas summers. The cacophony of a school band where prizes are awarded to the white kids instead of to young Miles, who is honing the trumpet style that will later make him a jazz great. Text and illustration alike have an appropriately improvisational feel. Bermans verse is loose and a little bit choppy, with language that feels pared down to echo Daviss stylistic transition from the busy sound of bebop to the less-is-more feeling of the cool jazz he pioneered. Quotes from Davis are interspersed in a handwritten-looking font, lending immediacy to the text. Browns illustrations echo those handwritten lines with ink drawings that look almost unfinished and are enhanced by messy watercolors that pool around and past the lines, with drips of color sometimes making their way out of the illustrations and onto the text. (By largely limiting biographical information to the sections about Daviss childhood and afterward focusing on his music-making and the development of his unique sound, the author, for better or worse, sidesteps issues of heroin addiction and domestic abuse.) Back matter includes notes from the author and illustrator, as well as one from musician Wynton Marsalis, and a selected bibliography. laura Koenig (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Celebrating the incomparable jazz legend Miles Davis, Berman and Brown focus on the people, sounds, and experiences that shaped his unique ear, laying the foundation for a nearly half-century hallmark career.It can prove quite difficult to share the life story of Miles Davis for younger audiences. Looking beyond the pace-setting, genre-redefining musical legacy, a whole host of complications appear. Here Berman trains her lens on a young Miles: navigating Jim Crow-era segregation in high school, breaking out to finding his place in a bustling New York jazz scene, and navigating early-career anxieties, strife, and "dark days" before taking center stage again at 29 as the audience "goes wildelectrified and satisfied." In this rendering that accents change just as much as genius, readers are left with lessons of perseverance, critical listening, and the importance of embracing their own uniqueness. Brown goes to work on the illustrations, accompanying the free-verse text with inspired ink-and-watercolor paintings that use color and perspective to evoke Miles' sound. An amazing touch throughout is the inclusion of timeless quotes from Miles himself in a display type that appropriately acknowledges the gravelly, gruff voice that made those sparingly delivered words pop that much more. Neither the primary text nor the author's note addresses Davis' serial abuse, so this is just an introduction.A stirring, soulful, well-researched look at the groundwork that informed Miles' signature sound, offering an entry point to a towering, complicated figure who reshaped 20th-century music again and again. (illustrator's note, discography, bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 7-10) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
From a young age, Miles Davis was obsessed with music. He started learning the trumpet at 13 and went on to become one of the most beloved and celebrated Black jazz artists. This free-verse picture book follows Miles, who, throughout his life, never stopped listening to the sounds of the world and the music other people made. He goes to Juilliard to learn how to play classically, and he later picks up boxing to help him gain strength / and blowing power / to control his sound. Readers follow Miles through his disappointments, triumphs, and, most important, his willingness to change: I ain't never been scared of doing new things. The third-person free verse is interspersed with first-person recollections from Miles, and debut illustrator Brown does a satisfactory job of depicting Miles Davis in the different stages of his life, and of mimicking the movement in the words and music through his artwork. An entertaining introduction to the life of a famous jazz musician.--Jessica Anne Bratt Copyright 2019 Booklist
