11. The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music

The Green Piano: How Little Me Found Music. Roberta Flack and Tonya Bolden. Illustrated by Hayden Goodman. 2023. 40 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Little me, in my Blue Ridge Mountain town
of Asheville, North Carolina,
living on a street named Velvet,
then on one named Circle,
didn't have fancy-fine clothes,
high-priced toys,
or other richy-rich
things.
But I had music.
My treasure.
My gold.

Premise/plot: The Green Piano is a picture book autobiography of Roberta Flack--particularly her formative childhood years. The book focuses on Roberta Flack's love of music. It tells the story of how her father brought home a piano from a junkyard and painted it green. This gift of love was also a gift of music. (Though music was VERY important to Roberta, to the whole family, to the community, before this gift.)

The biography is written in free verse. 

My thoughts: Some books are written in verse and you don't know exactly why. It makes a lot of sense that a book about music would be written in verse. On the surface, it makes perfect sense, like it would be a great fit. Lyrics often are poetry. (Though perhaps not all lyrics?) However, I found the verse to lack a little magic. To me the verses just lacked rhythm and that certain spark that makes verse work well. The text didn't "sing" to me. Prose can sing--and sometimes does sing--poetry is expected to sing more often than not. 

I wanted to really love this one. Roberta Flack's music is something that I generally enjoy. (I do have favorites. I am familiar with her music.) The text is weaker than I would have expected. The illustrations, however, are more my cup of tea. There are spreads that I absolutely loved.

 

© 2023 Becky Laney of Young Readers