KING OF RAGTIME

While his father tried to convince young Scott Joplin to work with him on the railroad that provided reliable work for African American men, Scott’s heart answered another call—one that led him to become the “King of Ragtime.”

Scott Joplin was born into a musically talented family in which everyone knew how to play an instrument. However, it was his mother who first recognized her son’s exceptional talent for playing music. She allowed him to tinker on the piano of the White family she worked for. Young Joplin would make up tunes for her to dance and sing to while she worked. To further support his talent, she later traded cleaning services with a different employer in exchange for piano lessons for her son. That early training and Joplin’s dedication helped him land jobs as a piano player in honky-tonks throughout the Mississippi Valley. Later, Joplin made his way to Sedalia, Missouri, where he found work as a piano teacher, went to college to study music, and published his first song, “Maple Leaf Rag.” Writing with a bit of a twang and punctuating the narrative with idioms and onomatopoeia, Costanza delivers a biography as bouncy and colorful as ragtime itself. In the opening spread, a pastoral, hardworking newly freed Black men and women are carving out a life for themselves in Texarkana. The busy scene, with punches of optimistic blue, is full of animation and joy, motifs that repeat throughout each gorgeous spread. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

Outstanding.