Oooba lee Coooo, Oooba lee Cat,

Blow me a Bubble in Bubble Gum Scat!

Sound strange?  Not when you know how to scat.  Muriel Harris Weinstein’s latest book, When Louis Armstrong Taught Me To Scat, is an energetic tale written for ages 4-8 in which the great Louis Armstrong teaches his enthusiastic pupil how to scat.

The book begins with wonderful pictures of a little curly-headed girl and her mother enjoying wacky music from their table radio.  They dance, wiggle their hips and backsides, and waggle their heads to the beat.  But this is only the beginning.  Later that night after the girl falls asleep, the great and powerful Louis Armstrong himself appears in her dream and asks her an all-important question in his gravelly voice:

“Hey, you wanna scat?

Scat like a purring cat?”

From that moment on, the girl dances and scats across R.Gregory Christie’s wonderfully-illustrated pages, which he spatters from top to bottom with deep, rich colors and free-flowing scat-words.

Lovers of music, lovers of dance, lovers of scat, lovers of Louis…and lovers of African American history, mustn’t dare miss out on this one.  Great for your child’s personal library.

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