Song Shoots Out of My Mouth: A Celebration of Music (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Martin French (Illustrator) "Fach word running fast across lips..." (more)

Editorial Reviews

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.

From Booklist

Gr. 6-9. Adoff, a musician and son of Arnold Adoff and the late Virginia Hamilton, struts his own creative stuff in this auspicious debut collection of 24 poems. Though free in form and diverse in mood and tone, all are about music, from Hip Hop to classical and from reggae to gospel. Another common element is the energy underscoring Adoff's language, which invites readers to move to the rhythm of the words. Some of the poems are slyly funny. Others are more serious; "88," for example, uses the piano, with its black and white keys, as a metaphor for civil rights and integration. A few are forgettable, but all shine with the poet's obvious love of music and musicians. As for French's vividly colored pictures, at their worst they resemble greeting card art lacking originality and coherence; at their best, they radiate a sun-drenched energy that harmonizes beautifully with the poet's words. Michael Cart
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Young Adult
  
• Hardcover: 48 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile; 1st edition (November 11, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525469494
• ISBN-13: 978-0525469490
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 9.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,285,817 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ...And shoot they do, October 4, 2002

By	Evan Scott (Yellow Springs, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

I first heard poems from this book read aloud at a summertime pool party and it was true entertainment.

The words themselves flow musically -- as do the rhythms of the poems. They're just as fun to read aloud as they are to hear aloud.

Not for cozy, bedtime reading, The Songs Shoot Out of My Mouth should be "played."