Ella Fitzgerald (The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa)

Ella Fitzgerald (The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa)
By:  Andrea Davis Pinkney
Illustrated by:  Brian Pinkney
Copyright 2002
Hyperion Books for Children
Biography Genre

                                            Ella Fitzgerald (The Tale of a Vocal Virtuosa)

     This book is not like the typical biography. There are quite a few things I love about this book. Mainly I love the detail in Ella's biography. While this is a picture book of a biography, it provides a lot of information about Ella's success as a musician. Although it does not begin with the day and place of Ella's birth, it goes into great detail about how Ella always loved music and how she became a successful singer. I would not recommend this book as a biography, because it does not provide information about Ella's entire life and death. I really appreciated the illustrations in this book and the fact that it is told from the perspective of a character, Scat Cat Monroe.
     At the end of the book, the author provides a more detailed biography, under the title "A Note From the Author". I wish theses facts would have been put in throughout the entire book, but I think the main goal of this book is to tell how Ella began her success. This was a fun read, but I would not read it with my students because the story does not give students the entire life of Ella Fitzgerald. It would still leave the students with a lot of questions.