Books like Trombone Shorty
By Troy Andrews
For the kid who bangs on pots, hums through the house, or begs for an instrument of their own, Trombone Shorty is proof that a big dream can start in a small body. joyful, musical, rooted in the streets and sounds of New Orleans
A quiet, piano-loving boy — the son of a man once enslaved — grows up to compose music so joyful and rhythmic it earns him a new name: the King of Ragtime.
A rhyming journey traces hip-hop's roots from folktales, spirituals, and poetry through James Brown's showmanship to the four pillars of graffiti, breaking, DJing, and MCing that built a global culture.
A young left-handed girl picks up her brother's guitar, flips it upside down to play it her own way, and by age eleven has written "Freight Train," a song the world would come to know.
A joyous celebration erupts at Harlem's Schomburg Library in honor of Langston Hughes, as word-children like Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka gather to dance, stomp, and recite poems at their hero's feet.
A musical girl from small-town North Carolina, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, grows into the singer Nina Simone — her sweet voice rising into a thunderous roar of protest during the Civil Rights Movement.
A Black boy growing up in segregated 1940s North Carolina loves to draw everything around him, but becomes a football star instead — until his dream of making art finds its way to him.
A lyrical journey through the history of Black music in America, from spirituals and blues to jazz, soul, and hip-hop, packed with over 80 references to real artists like Billie Holiday and Kendrick Lamar.
A real-life picture book biography follows young Alma Thomas from a childhood soaking up color in Georgia to becoming a celebrated painter — teaching art for decades before beginning her own boundlessly colorful paintings near age seventy.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A boy who longs to be a trumpeter can only play an imaginary horn, until a musician from the neighborhood night club notices his ambition and takes him seriously.
A girl from the Muscogee Creek Nation dreams of jingle dancing at the next powwow, but her dress has no jingles — so she turns to the women in her family and community to borrow theirs.
A Victorian artist named Waterhouse Hawkins sets out to show the world what dinosaurs looked like by building the first life-size dinosaur models, first in England, then in New York City.
