Songs Shoot Out of My Mouth: A Celebration of Music
by Jaime Adoff
2002
From School Library Journal
Grade 7 Up-Adoff, a musician and the son of Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff, debuts here with poems about music. His free verse is highly rhythmic and demands to be performed, like these opening lines from the title poem: "Each word running fast across lips./A direct line to my hips, twist and shake./My voice another arm, another leg./My throat the Cape Canaveral of my soul./Song shuttle/blasting off/into deep blue/soprano sky-." Jazz, rap, hip-hop, and Mozart are equally celebrated. Young musicians will also recognize their own lives in the poems about school bands and playing air guitar. Only musicians will get the pun poems "2#" (too sharp) and "Way 2b" (way too flat), though these terms are defined in the backnotes. These notes also contain a brief paragraph about each musician mentioned in the poems, along with "suggested listening" for each artist. Young teens will get the most out of these poems, with their raplike wordplay and puns, although the picture-book format might turn some of them off, and the poems are in tiny, cramped print. The splashy, colorful illustrations picture contemporary teens of various ethnicities. While many young adults may not be immediately drawn to the book's physical package, it should find a small and appreciative audience in most collections.
Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Grade 7 Up-Adoff, a musician and the son of Virginia Hamilton and Arnold Adoff, debuts here with poems about music. His free verse is highly rhythmic and demands to be performed, like these opening lines from the title poem: "Each word running fast across lips./A direct line to my hips, twist and shake./My voice another arm, another leg./My throat the Cape Canaveral of my soul./Song shuttle/blasting off/into deep blue/soprano sky-." Jazz, rap, hip-hop, and Mozart are equally celebrated. Young musicians will also recognize their own lives in the poems about school bands and playing air guitar. Only musicians will get the pun poems "2#" (too sharp) and "Way 2b" (way too flat), though these terms are defined in the backnotes. These notes also contain a brief paragraph about each musician mentioned in the poems, along with "suggested listening" for each artist. Young teens will get the most out of these poems, with their raplike wordplay and puns, although the picture-book format might turn some of them off, and the poems are in tiny, cramped print. The splashy, colorful illustrations picture contemporary teens of various ethnicities. While many young adults may not be immediately drawn to the book's physical package, it should find a small and appreciative audience in most collections.
Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
