A Horn for Louis

by Eric A. Kimmel

Overview

How did famous New Orleans jazz trumpet player Louis Armstrong get his first horn?
 
Seven-year-old Louis Armstrong was too poor to buy a real instrument. He didn’t even go to school. To help his mother pay the rent, every day he rode a junk wagon through the streets of New Orleans, playing a tin horn and collecting stuff people didn’t want. Then one day, the junk wagon passed a pawn shop with a gleaming brass trumpet in the window. . . .
 
With messages about hard work, persistence, hope, tolerance, cooperation, trust, and friendship, A Horn for Louis is perfect for aspiring young musicians and nonfiction fans alike!
 
History Stepping Stones now feature updated content that emphasizes Common Core and today’s renewed interest in nonfiction. Perfect for home, school, and library bookshelves!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307530950
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	09/09/2009
Series:	A Stepping Stone Book: A Stepping Stone Book History
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	96
File size:	5 MB
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

Eric Kimmel grew up in Brooklyn, New York, loving the music of Louis Armstrong, who lived a few miles away in Queens. He is the award-winningauthor of the Caldecott Honor Book Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Editorial Reviews

Kimmel embroiders one of the several contradictory anecdotes Louis Armstrong told about how he got his first horn into a warm Hanukkah tale with a whiff of old New Orleans. So poor that he sleeps with his Mama and little sister in a pile of quilts on the floor, seven-year-old Louis is proud of his paying job with the Karnofskys, Jewish proprietors of a junkyard. When the old tin horn on which he plays the music that wells out of him is smashed in a mishap, his affectionate employers present him with a spruced-up old cornet as a Hanukkah gift. Remembering his Mama's dictum, that they always pay their own way rather than accept charity, he tearfully rejects the horn at first-but then works out a deal with kindly Mr. Karnofsky to pay back the horn's cost. Culminating in a charged encounter between Louis and his idol, "King" Oliver, this simply told episode is punctuated with pointedly explicit lessons, but also animated by the joy Louis takes in hearing and performing his town's distinctive music. (illustrations not seen) (afterword, glossary) (Fiction. 9-11)

Kirkus Reviews