Celenza tells the story of Duke Ellington's process during the recording of The Nutcracker Suite. The story is completely based on facts: every character is real, the interactions are real, and the recording does exist. However, Celenza relied on her imagination to fill in the gaps of information due to a lack of a detailed description of the recording session. The book is written much like a nonfiction book, but some of the conversations are made up. This is a very cute and funny book, there are many times throughout the book where silly language was used such as "The hippest cats of jazz-a-tooty." I loved the art style of the illustrations, which served as a good visual aid for cultural icons. The book reads well, and is very entertaining. However, for me personally, I just wasn't as interested in the story itself than I'd anticipated. I'm sure to anyone who has a deep love for jazz and ballet, they would love this book. ( )

I liked the book, but I'm not sure how many children are very interested in jazz, particularly jazz based on the Nutcracker Suite. ( )

This is a great book about music and how you can use the same music and just change it a little bit to make sound different. Duke loved the music o the Nutcracker but he also loved to play Jazz music. So he changed up the music to Nutcracker to make a little more Jazzy and it was a great hit. This book comes with a CD and I would play the music from the Nutcracker then the music from Nutcracker Suite and let them hear the difference. ( )

The art has a very free flowing feeling like listening to Jazz. The colors are bright, vivacious and fun to follow.

The story is not one with much action but imagination. It is fun to read the words of how Duke Ellington and his jazz entourage might have been told to play the musical suite in jazz form. Even while reading it without listening to the cd you can hear the music and feel it. I think that is what Jazz is all about. ( )