"Jazz" By: Walter Dean Myers

The book, Jazz, is a great book! It starts off with an introduction about the history of jazz and its origins. Then it goes into a series of poems that are written to depict a certain style of jazz. They also tell about various jazz musicians, and about some of the history. The poems emphasize certain phrases or words by using a different font and highlighting them a different color. At the end of the book there is a jazz glossary, which explains what various jazz terms mean. And at the end of the book there is a timeline of important events. This book not only has a bunch of great poems, but it is full of information about jazz to help the reader better understand the rhythm of the poems.
In addition to a wonderful book the poems are laid out in a fun way, and the illustrations fit the colorful jazz theme. On some pages the poems are set normally while other pages the poem is tilted sideways, and other times the book needs to be held vertically to read the poem. The illustrations are very colorful, and made by placing black ink on acetate and then placing it over acrylic.
This book is definitely one that I'd like to incorporate into my future classroom. It'd bring both music and poetry together while incorporating some history in a neat way. I think it would be neat to split the class up into groups, and have them each present a poem. It would be fun for them to re-read the poem multiple times in order to decide how to perform it. In addition to reading the poem multiple times they would also listen to the jazz style in order to get an idea for the particular style of music that their poem is representing.