Review: Marilyn Nelson's ‘Sweethearts of Rhythm' Honors Unheralded WWII Heroines

SWEETHEARTS OF RHYTHM

The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Band in the World

By Marilyn Nelson

Illustrated by Jerry Pinkney

Dial. $21.99. Ages 10 and up

Come midnight a bevy of "old hocked instruments" tune up in an empty New Orleans pawnshop. Through 20 poems in this note-perfect picture book, various horns and wind instruments describe their "glory years" with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm, an all-female, integrated band that toured the United States and parts of Europe in the 1940s. Marilyn Nelson, who received a Newbery Honor for "Carver: A Life in Poems," weaves vivid details of the times -- World War II, Victory Gardens, the Jim Crow South -- into verses that sometimes swing with the women's big-band sound ("It Don't Mean a Thing") or go soft and sad as a jazz chanteuse ("The Song Is You"). These instruments fairly burst with pride in their Sweethearts' skills. A sassy trumpet recalls how it "blasted the rafters," a horn remembers "hep-cat audacity," and a tenor sax reflects on a musical "prayer for peace." Five-time Caldecott Honor-winner Jerry Pinkney does a brilliant job of visually representing this era. His watercolors sweep across double-page spreads of marching soldiers, segregated water fountains and jubilant Armistice crowds but also spotlight jitterbugging teens and a Sweetheart tending her sax reed. "Hearken to the story behind each song," advise the trombones. Thanks to Nelson and Pinkney, we now better know an important story of American music and the brave, talented women who created it.

-- Mary Quattlebaum