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Summary
Summary
How did four cheeky lads from Liverpool - John, Paul, George and Ringo - become the greatest rock band in the world? Mick Manning and Brita Granstr'm tell the amazing story of The Beatles with captions and strip pictures for fans of all ages.
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The story begins. John Lennon's Liverpool childhood, his Auntie Mimi, his school band The Quarrymen; the developing friendships with Paul McCartney and George Harrison and the forming of The Beatles together with Stu Sutcliff and Pete Best. From amusing adventures in Hamburg to the arrival of manager Brian Epstein and record producer George Martin. Then Ringo Starr joins the group; fame and screaming fans; the famous tour to the USA; the making of the albums, key hit songs and early films. then the later years, with the gigantic Sgt Pepper album, their visit to India, the making of Magical Mystery Tour. Finally the break-up of the band and the new beginnings of solo careers for the Fab Four.
Author Notes
Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom have won many awards for their picture information books, including the Smarties Silver Award and the English Association Award. Their books for Frances Lincoln include The Beatles, Charles Dickens: Scenes from an Extraordinary Life, What Mr Darwin Saw, Tail-End Charlie, Taff in the WAAF, The Secrets of Stonehenge, Dino-Dinners, Woolly Mammoth, the Fly on the Wall series: Roman Fort, Viking Longship, Pharaoh's Egypt and Greek Hero, and Nature Adventures. They have four sons, and divide their time between the North of England and Brita's homeland of Sweden. Find out more about their books at www.mickandbrita.com. MICK MANNINGÿandÿBRITA GRANSTRÖMÿhave developed a unique approach to picture information books over the last 21 years. Sharingÿthe illustration between them and mixing words and pictures in inventive ways, they have won many awards, including the Smarties SilverÿAward, and are five-times winners of the English Association Award. Mick fell in love with wildlife on primary school nature walks many yearsÿago, and has an MA in Natural History Illustration from the Royal College of Art. Brita grew up on a farm, and has an MFA from Konstfack inÿStockholm. They spend a lot of their time having both Swedish and British Wild Adventures with their four children. Their other books for Frances Lincoln include:ÿThe Beatles;ÿCharles Dickens,ÿScenes from an Extraordinary Life;ÿWhatÿMr Darwin Saw;ÿTail-End Charlie;ÿTaff in the WAAF;ÿThe Secrets of Stonehenge;ÿWoolly Mammoth;ÿandÿtheÿFly on the Wallÿseries:ÿRomanÿFort, Viking Longship;ÿPharoah's Egypt;ÿGreek Hero.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Beatles's first visit to the U.S., Manning and Granstrom present a chronological tour of the ascent of "those fresh-faced, cheeky lads from Liverpool." Opening in 1940 with John Lennon's schoolboy years, the book covers the group's origins as the Quarrymen, their growing fame, personnel changes ("I'm sorry, Pete, you're fired," manager Brian Epstein tells drummer Pete Best), and the evolution of their music. Exuberant watercolor-and-pencil cartooning, concise narration, and sidebars offering anecdotes, song backgrounds, and historical context make this a well-rounded and engaging introduction to these music icons. Ages 8-12. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
This slim, cheeky book is a delightful introduction to the Beatles, and the fresh, lively art will draw kids right in. The book is arranged chronologically, beginning in 1940. Readers get insight into the early days of John, Paul, and George; then the story widens as John, Paul, and George come together as bandmates and eventually Ringo joins them. In short order, Beatlemania takes over first England and then the world. By 1970, that particular story is over, but the colorful blocks of art and text explain what happened to each of the Beatles after the band broke up. Each spread is dominated by a cartoon-style drawing, with other bits of information appearing in illustrated sidebars. What was happening with the band is often juxtaposed with what was happening in the world, but much of the emphasis is on how songs came to be. This is clearly an import (references to the Just William stories and jelly babies aren't really explained), but readers will make connections through context. A bouncy way to meet the Beatles.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
WHAT MUST ANYONE born this century make of the Beatles? They didn't command attention by swinging naked on demolition balls. They wrote songs called "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "All You Need Is Love," sentiments so quaint they'd trigger thousands of snarky tweets if the tunes were released today. They wore matching suits. Without an accompanying CD, download or hyperlink, how can a book convey the revolutionary impact of their music? How can you present the case, as the husband-and-wife team Mick Manning and Brita Granstrom do in "The Beatles," that "from boy bands to punk rockers and rap singers, you could say it all began with those fresh-faced, cheeky lads from Liverpool"? To make the Beatles as approachable as possible, Manning and Granstrom (whose previous children's books tackled even more distant subjects, like Charles Dickens and Stonehenge) start by presenting John, Paul, George and Ringo as ordinary kids. With Granstrom handling the bulk of the artwork and Manning the text, the soon-to-be-Beatles cope with fractured families and the deaths of parents, are teased at school and struggle to fit in with new friends. They immerse themselves in books and listen to the radio in their bedrooms. Once the boys form a band, the book speeds through their music and careers, devoting sections to the Cavern Club in Liverpool, the recording of "Yesterday," the launch of Apple Records and other recognizable milestones, right up through the Beatles' messy breakup. Manning and Granstrom cram trivia onto every page, but it's hard to say what third or fourth graders will make of facts about the reggae origins of "Ob-La-Di Ob-La Da" or the role of Pete Best's mother in the Beatles' careers. "The Beatles" connects most viscerally when it makes the band's accomplishments relatable to any preteen reading it; as when Lennon writes "Strawberry Fields Forever" about a childhood haunt, and when hard-working mothers inspire McCartney's "Lady Madonna." Boomer parents are likely to feel relieved that the passage on "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" makes no reference to psychedelics (although Manning doesn't flinch from saying that Lennon was "murdered by a deranged gunman"). As a tour, "The Beatles" lacks some magic and mystery. Banal phrases like "beautiful songs" and "experimental music" may not inspire younger readers to take the aural trip that is "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Granstrom's drawing style falls somewhere between "Caillou" and "Doonesbury." She nails her characters' evolving hairstyles and Lennon's slender, pinched nose, but the other Beatles, McCartney in particular, are less identifiable. Here and there, the book also suffers from its European bias (Manning is British, Granstrom Swedish). A '60s timeline juxtaposes world news with Beatles highlights, but when it comes to 1968, it cites protests "against the threat of nuclear war between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union" as key events, not mentioning the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. But "The Beatles" makes its larger point: that friends who met when they were young joined together to discover the joys of making music, worked tirelessly to realize that dream (through repeated gigs in raucous bars and clubs - no "American Idol" vault to fame here), then drifted apart into lives of their own. For 21st-century kids, the fact that they did it without texting, apps or Auto-Tune technology - and on records "made of a sort of plastic" - may be the most consciousness-expanding lesson of all. DAVID BROWNE, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Men's Journal, is the author, most recently, of "Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-5-This enchanting picture book presents a concise, child-friendly overview of the Beatles for those with little to no knowledge of the group, starting with a quick look at the four's childhood days and ending with their breakup in 1970. In an upbeat tone, Manning covers familiar ground, briefly discussing some of the four's most famous songs and providing bite-size synopses of watershed moments, while Granstrom affectionately re-creates iconic images of the group, such as their arrival in America and their legendary rooftop performance at Apple Records. Loose-lined, cartoonish illustrations full of speech bubbles add a comic-book tone, imbuing the work with a whimsical, lighthearted air. Sidebars interspersed throughout and a time line at the end provide some historical context. Manning glosses over events that would be inappropriate for younger readers (for example, the band's amphetamine-fueled, sex-soaked early experiences in Hamburg, Germany are cheerfully transformed into descriptions of the boys "dressing in leather and doing crazy things: screaming into their microphones, telling jokes and stomping their feet"), and many details, including marital transgressions and most of the conflict within the band, are left out entirely. The result is a portrait of the Fab Four as a fun-loving, goofy quartet-an image of which manager Brian Epstein himself (who was responsible for the group's more clean-cut initial look) would've approved. A charming introduction to a beloved pop group and its cultural and historical impact.-Mahnaz Dar, School Library Journal (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The Beatles age; a couple of them even pass away, but they never grow old, and Manning and Granstrm bring them back fresh as daisieseven with all their little blemishes. This is a fizzy and surprisingly thorough tour of the decadelong joy of the Beatles. So much of their getting together was the work of luck, but these four were musicians first and foremost, so it probably wasn't a miracle that their paths would cross somewhere along the way. The book is laid out in two-page spreads, illustrated cartoon-style, with a welter of boxed items per page that give crisp factual infousually no more than a couple dozen words at a timewhile the text buzzes along. The topical organization works well at introducing each Beatle (Pete Best appears in a small font) and charting the critical moments along their rise to fame and beyond. The text is breezy but intelligent, folding in rock-'n'-roll history along with biography, nor does it gloss over the quibbles, firings and low moments. It doesn't dwell upon them either, for this is an upbeat story. The artwork is light of spirit and drenched with psychedelic colorsnot of the woo-woo variety but of intense saturation. Adding to the story are snippets of critical moments of world history that influenced not only the Beatles' music, but all of us. A fine little addition to Beatlemania, despite the rather unprepossessing cover. (timeline, bibliography, filmography, discography, glossary) (Nonfiction. 8-12)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
