The Sound That Jazz Makes
By Carole Boston Weatherford
Illustrated by Eric Velasquez
Walker & Co., $16.95
ISBN 0802787207

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The subject of the musical form called jazz has always produced apprehension. Because of its improvisational nature, jazz is sometimes received with confusion and reluctance. Some books take hundreds of pages to define jazz; few books do it in less.

Carole Boston Weatherford and Eric Velasquez deftly manage a concise, historical introduction on this rich art form in their book The Sound That Jazz Makes. Their story reveals an accurate lineage of jazz origins, using Weatherford's lyrical rhymes and Velasquez's lush colorscapes. Young readers will be mesmerized.

Every page is a moving, breathing, feeling work of art. Weatherford's words and Velasquez's vibrant hues produce a rare coupling, fusing together one of this year's most appealing children's books. Their concert of literary and visual magic creates page-by-page masterworks, steeped in a variety of discussion material for young people and parents alike.

Weatherford's quatrains offer a human, flesh-and-blood metaphor associated with jazz. It is a story with a past composed of pain and sweat, suffering and joy, slavery and freedom, blood and healing, expressing life and living in a way that deserves to be heard. Although this book is aimed at young people, it is worthy of attention from all ages.

Velasquez's art honors the memories of notable jazz greats with his remarkable renderings. Weatherford concludes with the premise of jazz as an evolving form, not static or fixed. Because of its changing fluid form, the history of jazz is a beginning without an ending. The Sound That Jazz Makes is truly one of the finest examples of what a children's book should be.

Kevin Zepper works at an advertising firm in Fargo, North Dakota.