The Jazz Fly (book w/ audio CD)
PreSchool-Grade 1-When a drummer fly gets lost on his way to a gig, he tries to get directions from a frog, a pig, a donkey, and a dog, but none of them speaks his language. He finally finds his way to the club and all is well until the Queen Bee demands "-a new BEAT/or this band is OUT!" The fly is stymied until he remembers the retorts of the animals he heard on his way and uses those noises to create a whole new sound that makes the band famous. The rhyming text includes scat refrains like "ZA-baza, BOO-zaba, ZEE-zah RO-ni" that just beg to be read aloud. The unique illustrations, gray-toned pictures with contrasting hints of pastel colors, were accomplished by scanning pencil sketches into a Macintosh computer and then re-creating them with Adobe Illustrator. One spread features the gray figures of the bassist and saxophonist spotlighted in green and pink, respectively. The text itself is cleverly designed. Words representing sounds are portrayed as if they are coming right out of the animals' mouths in colored fonts. Together the illustrations and book design give the whole enterprise the feel of jazz, even without musical accompaniment. The accompanying CD is delightful. Gollub narrates with a jazzy beat, and the danceable music perfectly accentuates the story. Children will love hearing this book read aloud and imitating the animal sounds and other refrains. A natural for storytimes.Tim Wadham, Maricopa County Library District, Phoenix, AZCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.