Becoming Billie Holiday

By Carole Boston Weatherford and Floyd Cooper

Coretta Scott King Author Honor Award

The stunning voice and hard life of legendary jazz singer Billie Holiday is revealed through evocative, accessible poetry.
 
In 1915, Sadie Fagan gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanora. The world, however, would know her as Billie Holiday, possibly the greatest jazz singer of all time. Eleanora's journey to become a legend took her through pain, poverty, and run-ins with the law. By the time she was fifteen, she knew she possessed something that could possibly change her life--a voice. Eleanora could sing. Her remarkable voice led her to a place in the spotlight with some of the era's hottest big bands. Through a sequence of raw and poignant poems, New York Times best-selling and award-winning poet Carole Boston Weatherford chronicles the singer's young life, her fight for survival, and the dream she pursued with passion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781629791739

Carole Boston Weatherford

Carole Boston Weatherford is the author of numerous award-winning books. Her picture book BOX: Henry Brown Mails Himself to Freedom, illustrated by Michele Wood received a Newbery Honor. Unspeakable: The Tulsa Race Massacre, illustrated by the late Floyd Cooper, was a National Book Award longlist title, won the Coretta Scott King Award for author and illustrator, and received a Caldecott Honor and a Sibert Honor. When she's not traveling or visiting museums, Carole is mining the past for family stories, fading traditions, and forgotten struggles. She lives in North Carolina.

Reviews for Becoming Billie Holiday

[whisper1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Found in the young adult section of the library, as I was reading this book, I felt the cover should have notations that the some of the subject matter contained adult content.No doubt about it, the life of Eleanora Fagan was exceedingly difficult. Finding her voice and learning to accept the praise took her on a journey with joys and sorrows. Discarding her birth name given by her unwedded mother, she took the last name of her father, also a musician, and became Billie Holiday, who was most likely the best jazz singer to date. With parents who abandoned her, a neighbor who raped her, and a drug addiction that ruined her, the reader feels sorry for the things that occurred beyond her control, and then saddened by the choices she intentionally made that could have taken her on a better journey if different options were pursued. Told in a series of 100 poems, each with a heading borrowed from the title of her songs, and writing accompanied by background illustrations that leap off the page, this is a book that calls the reader to learn more about this legend named Billie Holiday.

[salsabrarian · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm usually not drawn to poetry stories. I only read this because it received Coretta Scott King Award recognition this year. But the poems pulled me into Billie's story, her pain, hard life, and success. Very affecting poems and richly illustrated in sepia and brown tones.

[bugsyboog · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book in verse tells about the famous Billie Holiday’s (Eleanora Fagan) rough upbringing. Each poem has its own bit of heartbreak, as Billie dealt with the abandonment by both of her parents, tough peers at school, harsh treatment by nuns in reform school, and sexual abuse from a neighborhood man. It tells how Billie looked up to her absent father, looking for his approval. He was a musician, and her involvement in the same jazz circles was an embarrassment to him. It is said that Billie Holliday sang the blues so well because she had such a hard life. She a had a magnificent voice. If this book is any indication, she had a really fast life that threw her in many difficult circumstances, and it seems like she had some fun along with some heartache and run-ins with the law.I liked this book, and usually books in verse annoy me. I really could not see how else you would write about someone who loved song so much. The artwork in the book was very interesting, almost all of it in sepia tones. The bad parts of Billie’s life were not glossed over, and they were not too graphic either. I think any kid interested in jazz music or growing up in Harlem would love this book.

[abbylibrarian_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a fictionalized memoir-in-verse of Billie Holiday. Beautiful, lyrical poetry and art, but I think I would have liked it better if I knew more about Billie Holiday going into it. It's somewhere between a novel and a biography. Also, the art is beautiful but the poems are all printed on pages with a gray, gritty background which makes it hard to read the text. I appreciate the symbolism, but wish it had been easier to read.