Just.... Because by Mo Willems

As the old saying goes, "It takes a village to raise a child."

This is how it happens.

Because a man named Ludwig wrote beautiful music...

A man named Franz was inspired to create his own....

And long after people first heard that beautiful piece, a man was invited to join an orchestra and a woman practiced constantly and many others learned to play, and an orchestra was formed, and ...

Because someone's uncle caught a cold--

Someone's aunt had an extra ticket for someone special....

And the little girl in the red sweater in Row C, Seat 14 heard Franz' beautiful music ...

... And she was changed.

That's how it happens, in Mo Willem's beautiful story of the sequence of musical inspiration in his brand-new hit book, Because (Hyperion Books, 2019), illustrated skillfully by artist Amber Rose. It takes many hands and many minds to make a moving musical experience, and Willems' story goes on to show the little girl all grown up and performing her music for her uncle now seated in Row C, Seat 14, and someone in another seat is changed, too. The wizardly award-winning author-illustrator Mo Willems, creator of the "score," and the "performance" by illustrator Rose, show just how the magic of music happens once more.

Says School Library Journal, "An iconic book not only for musicians and music lovers but also for anyone wishing to celebrate those who came before."

Razza-Ma-Jazz! Stalebread Charlie And The Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band by Michael Mahin

You've probably heard of jazz music. Skippity-bippity-be-bop and all that. And you've probably heard of country: twang-alang-alang. But what about spasm band music? Sing-taka-taka-pat?

Well, considering that one of the most famous spasm bands of all time was formed by a bunch of kids, I suppose I'd better tell you about it.

Back in 1895, life in the Storyville section of New Orleans was catch-as-catch can, and Stalebread Charlie and his buddy Warm Gravy were often hungry, filling their bellies with fast food, a beignet or a apple nabbed from a shopkeeper and a fast get-away from the cops. They hated to have to steal, so Stalebread started to give some thought to a better way to make some money.

As he pondered, he heard the brassy sound of a trombone and a ragtime tune played on a piano somewhere near.

"Gravy! We'll start a band. We'll never be hungry again!"

They found a piece of stovepipe for a megaphone and filled a can with pebbles. Stalebread sang into his pipe and Gravy gave his can a shake-a shook-a. It was a start, and soon Cajun stopped by with his tissue-paper kazoo and Monk added his pennywhistle to the mix. They weren't exactly a hit at first. Their first earnings were more like bribes. People gave them a few pennies to go play somewhere else.

But they added more boys and more instruments--a washboard, spoons, and a tambourine for percussion, a bass fiddle and guitar made from boxes, and Stalebread Charlie learned to play the heck out of a zither. They learned all the popular songs and spiced them up with their razz-a-ma-tazz, and they learned to perform in front of the popular dance halls, theaters, and restaurants to catch crowds of folks with a few nickels to spare. They became famous--so famous that the great actress Sarah Bernhardt made a special trip down to Storyville just to hear them. She even tipped them with a silver dollar, which must have bought the band a lot of beignets! And they gave themselves a name--

THE RAZZY DAZZY SPASM BAND!

Michale Mahin's forthcoming Stalebread Charlie and the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Clarion, 2018) tells in lively picture book form the true story of one of New Orleans' street waif bands, the famous one led by Stalebread Charlie himself, Emile Lacoume.

The jambalaya of music that was to be jazz was bubbling forth in the streets of New Orleans in the years around the turn of the 20th century. A gumbo of musical ideas added by folks from the Southern highlands and the fertile fields of the deltas, from Africa and the Caribbean, from France, Spain, and Sicily, from Cajuns and Creoles, all came together there as the urchin bands grew up with the music. In fact, Emile's band even helped name the music he helped create. The Razzy Dazzy Spasm band became so well-known that a slightly older group of teenagers--with real instruments, already playing in Papa Laine's Reliance Brass Band--decided to steal their name, but when the spasm boys fought back, the older boys picked a new name, The Razy Dazy Jazzy Band, which helped give a name to the music they all played.

Lacoume's Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band comes back to colorful life in Mahin's pithy account of a seminal period in American music, illustrated with artist Don Tate's lively double-page spreads of the band of boys, their alley-cat mascots, and the people of old New Orleans when it was "the land of dreams." Both Mahin and Tate append special notes filling in the history of jazz and the part played by children's street bands and particularly the real Stalebread Charlie, a.k.a., Emile Lacoume, who went on to play with most of the famous musicians of his time in New Orleans. With illustrated directions for young readers on how to make a homemade kazoo for their own spasm band, this new book is a humorous, historical, and inspirational story of the making-something-from-nothing spirit and love of music, a true piece of Americana also great for reading aloud.

Michael Mahin is also the author of Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters (read my review here).

Red Peril in Minnesota: Rising Star of Rusty Nail by Leslie M. M. Blume

Time dragged in Rusty Nail and nothing ever seemed to happen. Even the flies in the air seemed to stand still, as though suspended inside honey-colored amber.

Franny Hansen sometimes feels the weight of the sameness of life in her small Minnesota town, slowly dying even in the bustling years of the early 1950's. Still, Franny and her best friend Sandy make the best of it, as they, as the defenders of democracy against the Communist hordes, are doing one late summer afternoon as they hurl their water balloons from the roof right down on prissy Nancy Orilee, Franny's chief rival for premier pianist of Rusty Nail. Franny and Sandy are grounded for their misdemeanors, but that doesn't stop them from spying on Rusty Nail's most eligible bachelor and his new Russian wife. Sandy is sure that she's a Commie spy, but when Franny spots movers unloading the first grand piano she's ever seen, she realizes that Madame Malenkov must be a great concert pianist and that she has to convince her to become her new piano teacher.

Franny succeeds by trading five afternoons of housework and errands for the chance to have a real teacher. Madame Malenkov is secretive, critical, and difficult, but when Franny finally gets an opportunity to play for her, she senses something special in the ten-year-old pianist and agrees to make her an official student. As Franny learns Madame Malenkov's own personal history of losing her parents and fleeing Stalinist persecution, she realizes that she's no Communist spy. The other ladies of Rusty Nail are sure that their new resident is a danger to the community and imitating Senator Joseph McCarthy, form their own Un-American Activities Committee, the W.O.R.N.A.T.C.T. (Women of Rusty Nail Against The Communist Threat). Yet for Franny Hansen, the mysterious, imperious Russian is her only chance to find her own place as a pianist in the world beyond Rusty Nail.

Against the backdrop of the time capsule town of Rusty Nail, Leslie Blume's The Rising Star of Rusty Nail is a hilarious story of a girl whose passion for music and dislike for "Prancy Nancy" Orilee takes her to the Minnesota Youth Piano Contest and on to a world she has not yet even imagined. Franny is an unforgettable character, as peppery as a pack of RedHots and so much herself that even a one-stoplight town like Rusty Nail can for her be the first stepping stone to the bright lights of New York.

Blume's other notable novels for middle readers are Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters and Tennyson.