31. How Sweet the Sound: A Soundtrack for America. Kwame Alexander. Illustrated by Charly Palmer. 2025. 48 pages. [Source: Library] [4 stars, nonfiction, picture book for older readers, poetry, history]
First sentence: Listen to the fireside chorus
of the motherland
to the talking drums
dancing beneath the golden sun
that beat a bold tapestry
of yesterday's stories
and tomorrow's dreams.
To the magnetic chants that welcome each day
and the praise songs that sing us farewell.
Premise/plot: Picture book for older readers. How much older? A lot older. The premise is simple enough: an overview or history of Black Music in America. The delivery is anything but simple. How Sweet The Sound requires a LOT of unpacking--which requires effort and diligence. NONFICTION POETRY. History is conveyed through poems. Poetry in and of itself requires a good bit of unpacking to appreciate. The lines are coded; in other words, each poem features many coded lines--insider code that requires unpacking. Meaning can only be clarified/understood if you're in the know. Each poem has a decoder, if you will, annotations that go into greater depth explaining most every word. If you don't read the back matter, then you've missed the point.
My thoughts: I read it the first time and skipped the back matter. I was not impressed. Not really. Sure I knew that my appreciation was expected, was required, was almost mandatory. (Some books are like that.) I decided that before I gave it a review, I'd reread it. I decided to start with the back matter. Would I recommend this method? Maybe. Probably. It wouldn't hurt. I would either a) suggest starting with the back matter b) suggest reading a spread/poem at a time and then flipping to the back matter.
I don't know that I love this one. I think in part because I keep wanting the book to be something else. Which is not at all fair. I'll try to clarify. I love, love, love, love, love reading picture books about jazz, for example. Fiction. Nonfiction. I have read many picture book biographies of black jazz musicians, for example. I've read picture book biographies of other musicians--not just jazz. This book isn't about one genre, or even a handful of genres. It is all encompassing. ALL genres, many centuries, many decades. There's some name-dropping here and there--mainly coded. But this is like a fly-over or skimming. It isn't a deep-dive. Poetry is a natural choice for the narrative. It is. It truly is. It makes sense in so many ways. Yet poetry is another barrier for me personally.
© 2025 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews
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