Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane

Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane

By Carole Boston Weatherford

Illustrator: Sean Qualls

Hardcover

Age 5-9 years

Before John was a jazz giant,he heard hambones knocking in Grandma's pots, Daddy strumming the ukulele, and Mama cranking the phonograph. Young John Coltrane was all ears. And there was a lot to hear growing up in the South during the 1930s: church songs, preachers praying, music on the radio, the bustling of the household. John was surrounded by all kinds of vivid noises that shaped his own sound as a musician.

With vibrant words and glowing colors, Carole Boston Weatherford and Sean Qualls compose an amazingly rich hymn to the childhood of jazz legend John Coltrane.