A review by iffer
Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford

3.0

This book was an interesting dip into the life of Billie Holiday, but probably not the best book for readers, especially the age group at which it is directed, who do not have much of a background about jazz and blues. The poems didn't floor me, but there were some beautiful ones, and it was a creative and imaginative touch on Weatherford's part that each poem was the title of one of Holiday's songs, which carried on the theme that begins the book in the form of Tony Bennett's quote that Holiday "didn't sing anything unless she had lived it." The illustrations in the book are gorgeous, and somehow packed with the emotion described in the poems. As a sidenote, I didn't like the fact that the poems were printed on speckled paper, as it just seemed unnecessary and made the words slightly more difficult to read.