There’s a tall-tale feeling to this picture-book biography, and not just because it opens with a godmother/voodoo queen putting a spell on a newborn baby. It’s also written in second person, building on a “let’s say…” construction. This technique works in an accounting of Jelly Roll Morton’s early life, since he was a bit of a braggart who “tooted his own horn” and claimed to have invented jazz (both the music and the word) in 1902. He’s not the only musician to have made that claim and certainly there were a lot of creative hands in that jazz stew in New Orleans back then. What can be documented is that Jelly Roll was the first musician to publish a jazz composition. The playful text is complemented by appropriately whimsical illustrations that give a strong sense of the early New Orleans jazz scene. (Ages 5–9)

In this unusual and inventive picture book that riffs on the language and rhythms of old New Orleans, noted picture book biographer Jonah Winter (Dizzy, Frida, You Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?) turns his focus to one of America's early jazz heroes in this perfectly pitched book about Jelly Roll Morton.

Gorgeously illustrated by fine artist Keith Mallett, a newcomer to picture books, this biography will transport readers young and old to the musical, magical streets of New Orleans at the turn of the 20th century.

A Neal Porter Book