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Carole Boston Weatherford; Floyd Cooper (illustrator). Becoming Billie Holiday.
Honesdale: Wordsong, 2008. Octavo, original dust jacket. $85.
Signed first edition of these poems chronicling the rise of Billie Holiday’s career.
Borrowing their titles from her songs,Weatherford’s poems explore Lady
Day’s rough childhood in Baltimore, her early gigs in Harlem, and her defining
performance of “Strange Fruit” at the age of 25.
Chris Raschka. Mysterious Thelonious.
New York: Orchard Books, 1997.
Small quarto, original dust jacket. $100.
Inscribed first edition of two-time Caldecott medalist Raschka’s visual tribute to
Thelonious Monk. Raschka matches the musical notes of the chromatic scale to the
values of the color wheel, transposing the sounds of Monk’s “Misterioso” into paint.
Chris Raschka. John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.
New York: Atheneum Books, 2002.
Quarto, original color-printed boards and clear pictorial dust jacket. $75.
Signed first edition of Raschka’s celebration of John Coltrane, in which the
musical elements of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” are performed by a box, a snowflake,
some raindrops, and a kitten.
Gary Golio; Ed Young (illustrator). Bird & Diz.
Somerville: Candlewick Press, 2015.
Double-sided color panorama in pictorial boards. $50.
Signed first edition of Golio’s panoramic tribute to Charlie “Bird” Parker and
John “Dizzy” Gillespie, a running commentary on their 1945 bebop collaboration
“Salt Peanuts,” extending to a length of almost ten feet.
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[Anne Margaret Polhill]. Parisian
Sketchbook.
Several places, mostly
Paris: (1828-1830). Quarto sketchbook,
contemporary red paper-covered boards.
45 pages of drawings, most in ink over pencil,
with eight in ink wash and two in watercolor.
Three additional sketches laid in. $4500.
Comic sketchbook of an Englishwoman
abroad, most drawings dated between 1828
and 1830. Married in 1823, Brighton residents Anne and Edward Polhill had three
children in quick succession, and relocated to Paris to live more economically.
Anne’s lively drawings reflect the experience of a young family in transition:
scenes of apartment hunting, strolls in the park, children at school, and balls in
the evening. Parisian landmarks, including the Tuileries and the Place du
Carrousel, provide the backdrop for wry sketches of prevailing manners and
modes. Aman on the street is captivated by a young lady’s “boa constrictor,” a
sharp contrast emerges between good and bad chaperones at a ball, the jilted
Prince Royal dances with a “jolie parfumeuse.” Polhill also records the July
Revolution of 1830, depicting shocked Englishwomen spying on soldiers in the
Place Vendôme: “Madame, they are shooting the King’s head off. True it is a
bronze head, but that is equally frightful.” A delightful artifact.
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