A young boy in living in Harlem spends his days looking out the apartment window across to other windows, keeping up with the neighbors' lives. He's particularly intent on waiting to see who moves into an empty place and is delighted when it turns out to be a jazz pianist. He also struggles with his unhappy parents and is even abandoned by them for a short period (? The narrative is fuzzy here). The premise is good, but the writing is wonky, it seems. Zeke's abandonment seems sudden and not really in line with where the story was going, and then the ending is way too abrupt and pat, making the arc even more strange and difficult to follow. ( )

Summary:

This was the story of a young boy whose whole life revolved around looking out the window of his parent’s brownstone apartment window people watching. One day he noticed a man moving into an apartment that had been vacant. The man turned out to be a Jazz musician. The boy loved to hear the man play music with his friends. Shortly after the man moved into the apartment the boy’s mother left home and his father vanished leaving the boy alone. The neighbors brought food to the boy but he would not open the door to let them in. The boy became scared and lonely after a while and left the apartment in search of food and his parents. When all looked loss the boy a woke in his bed and realized it had all been a dream.

Personal Reaction:

This book was real confusing to me I’m assuming that the boy woke up in his bed to see his parents because that’s where the story ends, but it also seem like he could’ve died and the vision of his parents was just that a vision.

Classroom Extension Ideas:

1. Play Jazz music for the class.
2. Have the children make cutouts of windows and tell the rest of the class what they see through their windows.

Zeke is an endearing character who makes the readers feel the empathy appropriate for his difficult home-life situation. Beautifully written, and I loved the author's use of musical references and rhythms that match the instruments she writes about. The ambiguous ending makes for great discussion! ( )

The Jazz Man portrays the life of young Zeke during the Harlem Renaissance. The author uses beautiful figurative language and allusions, while the illustrator captures the author's words into beautiful yet haunting images that tell the story. The open-endedness of this book makes it great for discussion as interpretations will vary from dream-like to death. ( )

The Jazz Man is jam packed with Imagery and seems ripe for multimodal exploration. I would like to consider having students create sound palettes using Orff barred and handheld percussion instruments, and I can't miss the opportunity for examining the potentially ambiguous ending. The book's black and white images contrast sharply with the colorful descriptions in the text, so I see some textual analysis leading to drawings.

My mind also turns to social studies connections to time, place and socioeconomic factors influencing each of the character's motivations and actions ( )