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Bolden, Tonya

Rock, Rosetta, Rock! Roll, Rosetta, Roll!: Presenting Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Godmother of Rock & Roll

40 pp. | HarperCollins/Harper | February, 2023 | Trade ISBN 9780062994387 $18.99
(1) K-3 Illustrated by R Gregory Christie. Rosetta Tharpe's (1915–1973) music would influence some of the biggest stars of the twentieth century--from Chuck Berry and Little Richard to Johnny Cash and Aretha Franklin--and change the sound of American music forever. In a picture-book biography that takes Tharpe from childhood in Cotton Plant, Arkansas ("Little girl. Big guitar"), through her adult career, Bolden's dynamic second-person text puts readers in Tharpe's shoes. In tracing her musical successes, readers see her intermingling of musical genres ("mixing it up with Gospel's Cousin Boogie-Woogie, Cousin Jazz, Cousin Swing, Cousin the big, bad Blues") and with it the origin of rock and roll. Bolden describes Tharpe the performer as "bold, audacious--in a word, bodacious, whatever the song." Christie's acryla gouache paintings use bold contrasting colors to show Tharpe as the center of attention as well as the center of the action: singing, praying, duckwalking, and always with fingers flying on the guitar strings. He contrasts crisp angular lines (of industrial modernity--trains, spotlights, skylines) with elegant curves (of the guitar's body, of human figures). A detailed timeline, a lengthy author's note, and brief source notes round out this impressive offering about an often-overlooked figure in American music. Pair with Barlow's Little Rosetta and Her Talking Guitar (rev. 1/23).
Reviewer: Eric Carpenter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2023

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