"Jazz" Scores
February 22, 2007
Jazz won the 2007 Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award earlier this week. Poetry maven Sylvia Vardell announced the news on her blog, Poetry for Children. Honor books were Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant, The Braid (which was recently reviewed at the Tea Cozy blog), and Tour America.
Joyce Lee Wong garnered a promising-new-poet prize for her young-adult novel in verse, Seeing Emily.
Sponsored by Penn State, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Award,
established in 1993, is presented annually to an American poet or anthologist for the most outstanding new book of children's poetry published in the previous calendar year. Since its inception in 1993, the winning poet or anthologist has received a handsome plaque and a $500 honorarium made possible by Mr. Hopkins.
I took the quoted material from the award's web site, but the most current information is on Sylvia Vardell's blog.
I adored Jazz. Walter Dean Myers's use of language is phenomenal, and the poems really convey the spirit/essence of the musical form.
Posted by: Kelly Fineman | February 22, 2007 at 07:35 PM
I liked Jazz, too, Kelly, but I don't see that children will flock to it. Maybe because I know so few kids who are jazz fans.
Posted by: Susan | February 22, 2007 at 07:42 PM
I hear you on the kid appeal issue, and agree with you (as I believe you know). I also really loved Wynton Marsalis's Jazz ABZ from 2005 -- the book design on it was fabu, and the illos were awesome (very Art Deco-ish), and the poems were really creative and well-done (26 different forms, if memory serves).
Posted by: Kelly Fineman | February 23, 2007 at 09:50 AM
I haven't seen Jazz ABZ; I'll have to get it from the library. We have some hand-me-down videos of Marsalis's series for kids on PBS, though so far, though, Junior has not expressed much interest in watching them. I may just have to play them myself! Some years back we took some young relatives to a WM's kids' concert at Lincoln Center, and we all had a good time.
I also like the picture book This Jazz Man, from last year. Fun.
For a child whose parents are jazz aficionados, Jazz would probably be just the ticket.
Posted by: Susan | February 23, 2007 at 09:57 AM