Little Lou - Hardcover

Grade 2-4-- What starts out as a rather innocuous story of a black child's musical development in the 1920s shifts gears jarringly mid-book in both mood and style to become a jazzy comic-book tale, and then shifts back in its final pages to the bland narrative of the beginning. The first part tells about Lou's parents and birth and his introduction to music and jazz. It is illustrated in pencil and watercolors--mostly in browns and grays--and clearly tries to evoke a feeling of nostalgia. But without warning, unidentified gangsters are seen discussing someone they are after; it turns out to be one of the musicians. Just as suddenly, the illustrations are blocked into squares, and the text becomes cartoon captions in a Dick Tracy-like parody of good guys vs. bad. In a confusingly jumbled climax, very small Lou--of an indeterminate age--has the wherewithal to follow the bad guys into a garage, lock them in their car, remove their guns, and take the tires off the car. Amazing. To nobody's surprise, all ends happily, but there's little genuine humor in a bunch of all-white gangsters bursting into a black jazz club with their machine guns blazing. It makes a book that starts as mediocre even worse. --Jane Marino, White Plains Public Library, NY
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.