Satchmo's Blues (Picture Yearling Book)

A storybook biography of Louis Armstrong's childhood, with wonderful illustrations by Floyd Cooper and an evocative and inspiring self-contained story by Alan Schroeder. Growing up in poverty in New Orleans, little Louis is obsessed by the haunting music of his neighborhood and dreams of making such sounds himself. After spying a battered horn in a pawnshop window he has to scavenge for all kinds of menial work to earn the elusively vast sum of $5 to buy it. But he does so, and the story ends with his euphoria as he starts to play real music. A brief author's note describes Satchmo's later international success.