Customer Reviews

Becoming Billie Holiday

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Wowie, wow, wow. This little beauty just leapt to the top of my wish list. I've had my eye on Carole Boston Weatherford ever since she wrote Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom (Caldecott Honor Book), but as far as I'm concerned she's topped it with Becoming Billie Holiday.

The writing is killer and the format unique: an illustrated fictional verse memoir. And get this -- the title of each poem is a Billie Holiday song. I know next to nothing about Billie Holiday's life, but fictional or not, I'm perfectly content getting all my information here. My sense is that Weatherford was true to her subject; regardless, I don't care to break this book's spell with plain old facts. Straight non-fiction would be hard pressed to duplicate the imagery and sense of character Weatherford's poems convey.

To crown it all, I don't think you even have to be a Holiday fan to dig this book. Lady Day had it rough, and her childhood makes for compelling reading. Among other things there's prostitution, rape, racism, and reefer in here -- none of it tawdry, but gritty enough to rule out the elementary school crowd.

Gold Star Award Winner!

Billie Holiday does not have a happy life story. After all, she sang the blues for a reason. A biography written in verse seems only appropriate for a woman who lived her life in song -- whose only reliable escape was via music.

Weatherford uses Holiday songs as poem titles throughout the book, which, in addition to the first person perspective, serves to bring the reader close to the narrative. While the story of Holiday's life is disturbing, Weatherford does a fantastic job of pulling readers in for an occasional close-up, and in giving them much-needed distance -- room to breathe.

Subtlety is key, and both author and artist seem to realize the delicate balance.

Floyd Cooper used a subtractive technique for the gorgeous illustrations, meaning he used erasers to make shapes and then enhanced them with mixed media. The heavily textured, sepia tones flow seamlessly into the verse.

Then we have the book itself, smooth to the touch, but grainy and old school. Billie Holiday all over. This publisher, Wordsong, created a perfect marriage of author & artist, then packaged the work brilliantly in a book for the ages.

Reviewed by: Julie M. Prince

Carole Boston Weatherford is a class act. I don't know if there's anything I can say which will do this poet justice. How hard it must have been to to detail the emotional ups and downs of Billie Holiday's life when there's no actual way of getting into Billy Holiday's skin. The middle of this book dragged a bit for me, but the beginning and ending were brilliant.

This poem, wow:

With Thee I Swing

Racism ripped America at the seams,
and jazz stitched the nation together
one song at a time. But music
alone couldn't mend the tear.
The needle pricked my fingers
till my soul was sore, and I longed
to hop a train for home.


Having grown up well after this era, it's hard for me to imagine such a bitter landscape. But Weatherford paints the scene so that I can imagine it. The music of Billie Holiday now takes on more meaning for me

Many of us weren't born in the 1940s or earlier but we can just imagine how it was through the music of the great Billie Holiday. If you're a Billie Holiday fan as I am than I will have to say this book is 100% for you. Even if you're not, this book helps you understand life through the eyes of another. I fell in love with this book because this books haves everything you could want, the illustration is so creative and the chapters are short but has so much interesting facts. The title of each chapter is also a title to one of Billie Holiday songs. I couldn't help but stop half way through the book and listen to some of her jazz records just to hear that amazing voice. I differently would recommend this book to anyone to read.

It is surprising that Carole Boston Weatherford, author of Becoming Billie Holiday, has won poetry awards. The "Non-Violent Social Change Coretta Scoty King Award" seems justifiable if it was given based on Weatherford's intentions in writing Becoming Billie Holiday. The purpose of Weatherford's work is to educate young adults and children about historical figures and societal issues. However, despite Weatherford's educational content, I hesitate to praise her poetry. Telling Holiday's story through her fictional perspective is an ingenious idea, but it is executed poorly. Weatherford's narrative is too broken and underdeveloped and her writing is weak, grammatically and stylistically.

A problem immediately apparent in Weatherford's choice of poetry as a writing medium is the lack of plot and character development. There are also many instances where conflict is abrupt and brief, such as in "I'll Never Be the Same" and "Love for Sale." I think it would have been better if Weatherford had eliminated the poems that try to make this book a sequenced novel, such as "Bridge: I Cover the Waterfront," which is forced and blandly informative. Instead, the focus should be on specific, significant moments in Billie's life.

Stylistically, Weatherford's poems are also weak. The line breaks are awkward in that they do not flow when read--the line breaks actually make reading more difficult.
The choice of songs for some of the poem titles is irrelevant to the poem's theme and ignores the songs' themes. It is misleading and an injustice to the songs to change their context and meaning by matching them with nonrelated poems.
I would not give this book to students as an example of literature, though I might show it to a very young reader specifically interested in this book.

The book has some serious subjects, much like the music of Billie Holiday. In fact much of the poetry at the beginning of the book will make you gasp. Thus, I would not read the poems to younger kids. After a glomming opening, the story brightens up in the second part of the volume, her words allow you to exhale. To conclude, I enjoyed reading the verse, but I wondered if the stories in the poems were true-it wasn't' until I read the afterwords that I found out that the stories were fiction.

I feel like "experience" is a truly fitting adjective for this text. I would actually recommend it to children and adults alike, not only because of the richness in historical value, but also because the stories of Holiday's life that are told through this medium create a rich experience for all readers.

I believe, however, that Weatherford's most phenomenal accomplishment with the text is that it communicates the story in a very similar way to the songs and jazz style of Billie Holiday--her signature style of singing just behind the beat, improvising in subtle but profound ways. All of that, although not represented in the same way, is brought to life throughout the text. I recommend this to all readers.

-Lindsey Miller,[...]

If you enjoy jazz and its history, you can't go wrong with this story of Billie Holiday. Billie is sure to be on any jazz-lover's short list of influential jazz vocalists for her unique and distinctive style and interpretations of standards.

This book provides a fascinating and eminently-readable look at Billie's life, and lets us in on the emotional struggles as she fights against societal racism, how she breaks into the world of jazz and achieves stardom, and how she deals with her personal demons. It is written (and marvelously illustrated, by the way) in the authors unique free-verse poetic style. This writing style lends itself to easily being able to pick up the book and read a short or very long segment according to your own time demands.

Very highly recommended.

John Erisman
Idaho Jazz Society
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