The endpapers, with shoes and musical instruments, could become a matching game with pages in the book. Diaz’s illustrations show her background in animated films her active child dancers generally have the large-eyed sameness of cartoon characters. Overall, children included are racially diverse and vary in gender presentation. The ballet pages stereotypically include only children in dresses or tutus, but one of these dancers wears hijab. Read aloud, the zippy text will engage young children: “Tappity Tap / Fingers Snap,” reads the rhyme on the double-page spread for flamenco “Jiggity-Jig / Zig-zag-zig” describes Irish step dancing. In onomatopoeic, rhyming text, Bolling encourages readers to dance in styles including folk dance, classical ballet, breakdancing, and line dancing. 5-8)ĭancing is one of the most universal elements of cultures the world over.
Both text and oil-on-canvas-paper illustrations go for the obvious angle, making the effort as a whole worthy, but just a little too heavy-handed. The main story, however, is so bent on providing Sammy and the reader with object lessons that all subtlety is lost, as Mister Jake, Sammy’s father, and even Ernie hammer home the message. However hard he tries, though, Sammy just can’t box, and his father comforts him, reminding him that he doesn’t need to box: Joe Louis has shown him that he “can be the champion at anything want.” The high point of this offering is the big fight itself, everyone crowded around the radio in Mister Jake’s general store, the imagined fight scenes played out in soft-edged sepia frames. Despite his lack of athletic ability, Sammy wants desperately to be a great boxer, like his hero, getting boxing lessons from his friend Ernie in exchange for help with schoolwork. One of the watershed moments in African-American history-the defeat of James Braddock at the hands of Joe Louis-is here given an earnest picture-book treatment. Often the text is set on a background of giant notes and the format itself is as outsized as Farkle’s personality. Payne’s ( True Heart, 1999) humorous mixed-media illustrations feature characters with oversized heads and exaggerated features, changing points-of-view, and a variety of textures. ” and percussion: “ He went Boom, Bash, Clang-a-ma Clash! All the clamor that he could provide.” Yet the older McBride grows, the more dissatisfied he becomes with his accomplishments until finally given the opportunity to conduct, “his happy heart sings, / To brass, drums, winds, and strings, / And remarkable Farkle’s at last SATISFIED.” The story ends with a sweeping, dramatic, four-page panoramic gatefold featuring the proud ten-year-old standing on a symphony hall stage in front of an entire orchestra. Beginning with the violin Lithgow provides unique onomatopoeic tones for the instruments: “He went Reedle-ee, Deedle-ee, Deedle-ee Dee with all the strings at his side.” The trombone: “ He went Vroom-pety, Doom-pety, Doom-pety Doom.
Limerick-like rhyming text recounts the tale of a musical prodigy, Farkle McBride, who from age three, masters, then discards, instrument after instrument in the quest to satisfy his musical passions.
A welcome debut from an accomplished actor, the remarkable Lithgow.
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