![]() Riley-Webb’s moving, richly textured illustrations, rendered in acrylics with tissue collages on canvas paper, reflect the constant motion of jazz and the striking excitement of improvisation. This picture book emphasizes that the arts not only entertain, but can also be powerful change agents. Once she made it her own, however, she stunned audiences with her performance. When Jewish songwriter Abel Meeropol wrote “Strange Fruit,” about the lynching of blacks, for Billie to perform, Meeropol’s rendition of it failed to move her. As Holiday once said: “Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.” As “one of the first black singers to work in an all-white band,” Billie excelled until her handlers asked her never to talk with customers or walk alone, to use service elevators, and to stay upstairs until performance time-all to convince white patrons that the venues where she sang remained racially segregated. Golio crafts an honest biography of African-American jazz singer Billie Holiday, whose light skin, penchant for improvisation, and commitment to social justice often made her the center of heated controversy. Lynching: a strange and difficult but important topic for a song-and for this picture book. ![]()
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