Bring On That Beat

Pluck a fat bass, play me an ace. Trumpet a song, groove the night long. Saxophone jive, keep us alive! When a jazz trio begins playing under a streetlamp, everyone comes out to listen and dance. It's Harlem in the 1930s, and jazz has the power to make them groove. Combining her fine oil painting style with computer-manipulated colors, Rachel represents the shapes and colors of jazz in a tribute to Duke Ellington with a nod toward painters Klee and Kandinsky. Operating almost wordlessly, the innovative visuals are sprinkled with riffs of slang in snappy couplets-telling a bigger story of how the influence of jazz goes far beyond the neighborhood in this book. This tour de force brings jazz alive for the youngest children.