Working in the Scholastic archive, we sometimes discover a book in the stacks that takes us on a walk down memory lane. Today that book is...
Title: Scat!
Author/illustrator: Arnold Dobrin
Publication Date: 1971
Setting: New Orleans
Main characters:
- John, a.k.a. Scat – 8 years old
- Father – jazz trumpet player
- Grandma – “the real boss of the family”
Plot:
Scat loves to follow his father at night to hear him play Blues music, but his grandmother doesn’t approve of the “wild, good-for-nothing noise”. Whenever she is resting or out with friends, Scat goes to town to listen to his father play the trumpet. He wants to learn to make music himself, so on his birthday his dad gets him his own harmonica, and he teaches himself to play it… which Grandma doesn’t care for! Black, white, blue, and brown illustrations set the tone for the story:
Comments:
This was an unexpected surprise! I was in the 1970s area of the archive and pulled this book off the shelf (based on the title), and lo and behold the story features blues and the harmonica. This month we discussed Echo, by Pam Muñoz Ryan in our employee reading club, which also features blues and the harmonica--so yay for serendipitous discovery!
Readalikes:
Ben's Trumpet, by Rachel Isadora
Echo: a novel, by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Lentil, by Robert McCloskey
Rent Party Jazz, by William Miller and Charlotte Riley-Webb
Yolonda's Genius, by Carol Fenner
