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Showing 1 - 20 of 34 items
By Barb Rosenstock, Edwin Fotheringham. 2018
Presents the story of musician Bill Monroe, the youngest of eight children, who loved playing and singing harmonies with his…
family on the front porch and continued to work on his craft as he grew up. His deep Kentucky roots helped him to create the unique American music called bluegrass. For grades K-3. 2018By Peter Guralnick. 1998
Author of music biographies including Last Train to Memphis (DB 40087) examines the short life and long legacy of bluesman…
Johnson, who died at age twenty-seven in 1938. From scarce information, the author stitches together what is known of his life, and looks at the many blues musicians he influenced. 1989By Carl Perkins, David McGee. 1996
Autobiography of Carl Perkins following his life and career from 1932 through the 1990's. Carl Perkins, one of the original…
pioneers of rock, is famous for writing "Blue Suede Shoes" and performing with Elvis and Johnny Cash as they toured on behalf of Sun Records during the heyday of rockabilly. 1996By G. Neri, David Litchfield, Greg Neri. 2018
When Paul Met Artie is a picture book aimed at young readers from grades 4 to 7. From childhood friendship…
to brief teenage stardom, from early failures to musical greatness -- the incredible story of how Simon & Garfunkel became a cherished voice of their generation. For grades 4-7By Robert Andrew Parker, Robert A. Parker. 2008
By Margarita Engle, Rafael López. 2015
In Cuba in the 1930s, music filled the air. Millo had a dream playing drums of all kinds, but the…
country and her father only permitted boys to play drums. Millo finds a way to drum and practices in secret. Eventually her father relents and hires a music teacher for her. Millo's persistance means that she and her sisters become the first all-girl dance band in Cuba and play with and for famous people. (Story inspired by the childhood of Millo Castro Zaldarriaga.) For grades K-3By Patti Smith. 2011
By Carole Boston Weatherford, Floyd Cooper. 2008
Jazz vocalist Billie Holiday (1915-1959) reflects on her early years in this fictional memoir written in verse. In "I Can't…
Face the Music" Billie overcomes stage fright. In "Trav'lin' Light," her songs are her home. Some violence and some strong language. For senior high readers. Coretta Scott King Honor. 2008By Sharon Dennis Wyeth. 2002
June 1858 to March 1859. Nine-year-old Corey Birdsong and his family, fugitive slaves from Kentucky, settle into their new life…
of freedom in Amherstburg, Ontario, Canada. Corey makes friends, goes to school for the first time, and rescues Mingo--an old friend. For grades 2-4. 2002By Mark Bego, Martha Reeves. 1994
Autobiography of African American lead singer of Martha and the Vandellas, who recorded hit songs for Motown in the 1960s.…
Reeves recalls the inner workings of the Detroit record studio, reminisces about her fellow musicians, and discusses her rivalry with Diana Ross of the Supremes. Some strong language. 1994By Kathleen Krull, Stephen Alcorn. 2003
By Kevin Hawkes, Matthew Anderson, M. T Anderson, M. T. Anderson. 2001
A stubborn little boy with a mind of his own is determined to be a musician, even though his father…
is against the idea. He grows up to be the famous eighteenth-century composer, George Frideric Handel. For grades 3-6. 2001By Kristen Kemp, Kemp. 1998
Biography of songwriter-singer Jewel, who grew up in Alaska with no running water, electricity, or heat. Describes her early singing…
career, her struggles with dyslexia, and her parents' divorce. Jewel's determination to succeed led her to a famous boarding school for the arts and then to California. For junior and senior high readersBy Gladys Knight. 1997
Knight recalls the ups and downs of her life. She describes her struggle to become well known, first along with…
the Pips and later as a solo performer, and discusses her family, her various addictions, her failed marriages, and her feelings of isolation within the world of show businessBy Ray Coleman, Bill Wyman. 1990
The Rolling Stones's bass player has kept a scrapbook of press clippings and a diary for almost thirty years. Now…
he has trunkloads of these bits and pieces to jog his memory about the band's rise to stardom. Known as "the silent Stone," Wyman focuses on the 1960s, when the band served its tumultuous apprenticeship, but he goes on to document the less than sanguine years that followedBy J. Randy Taraborrelli, Kensington Publishing Corporation Staff, Hillel Black. 1989
An explosive and revealing portrait of the singer and superstar whose career began in the early 1960s. Describes Ross's relationships…
with Michael Jackson and with her fellow Supremes, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson, and covers her love affairs and her two marriages. Some strong language and some descriptions of sexBy Jeanne Walker Harvey. 2011
As a young boy growing up in North Carolina, Romare Bearden listened to his great-grandmother's Cherokee stories and heard the…
whistle of the train that took his people to the North people who wanted to be free. When Romare and his family, faced with Jim Crow laws, boarded that same train, he watched out the window as the world whizzed by. Later he captured those scenes in a famous painting, Watching the Good Trains Go By. Using that painting as inspiration and creating a text influenced by the blues and jazz that Bearden loved, Jeanne Walker Harvey tells the story of Bearden's children by describing the patchwork of daily southern life that Romare saw out the train's window and the story of his arrival in shimmering New York City. Artists and critics today praise Bearden's collages for their visual metaphors honoring his past, African American culture, and the human experience. 2011. For grades K-3By Lori Chambers, Jenny Roth, Minnie Smith. 2011
Minnie Smith's (ca. 1874-1933) feminist domestic novel, Is It Just?, is a harsh critique of the injustices perpetuated by male-dominated…
society and law. Published in 1911, it tells the tragic story of Mary Pierce, who, through the actions of her selfish and lazy husband, loses her land, her social standing, and ultimately her life.In Is It Just?, the conventions of the domestic novel - episodic presentation, stock characters, contrived plots, and romantic conclusions - illustrate the superiority of female values and argue for expanded social, political, and legal rights for women. A critical introduction by Jenny Roth and Lori Chambers frames Smith's specific references to the laws and social geography of British Columbia, situating the novel in relation to its historic and literary importance. This unique work of domestic literature adds to our limited library of Canadian feminist writings of the first wave.By Hilda Glynn-Ward, Patricia Roy. 1974
With tales of a gruesome murder, a typhoid epidemic, corrupt politicians, and a Japanese invasion, The Writing on the Wall…
was intended to shock its readers when it was published in 1921. Thinly disguised as a novel, it is a propaganda tract exhorting white British Columbians to greater vigilance to prevent greedy politicians from selling out to the Chinese and Japanese. It was also designed to convince eastern Canada of British Columbia's need for protections against an onslaught of the 'yellow peril.'This novel is not exceptional in its extreme racism; it reiterates almost every anti-oriental cliché circulating in British Columbia at the time of its publication. While modern readers will find the story horrifying and unbelievable, it is in fact based on real incidents. Many of the views expressed were only exaggerated versions of ideas held throughout the country about non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants. The Writing on the Wall is a vivid illustration of the fear and prejudice with which immigrants were regarded in the early twentieth century.By Robert Barr, Douglas Lochhead. 1973