Russell-Brown’s debut text has an innate musicality, mixing judicious use of onomatopoeia with often sonorous prose. But joy carries the day, and the story ends on a high note, with Melba “dazzling audiences and making headlines” around the world. Both text and illustrations make it clear that it’s not all easy for Melba “The Best Service for WHITES ONLY” reads a sign in a hotel window as the narrative describes a bigotry-plagued tour in the South with Billie Holiday. Picking up the trombone at 7, the little girl teaches herself to play with the support of her Grandpa John and Momma Lucille, performing on the radio at 8 and touring as a pro at just 17. Social learners and budding math lovers alike will find something awesome about this exceptional man.īewitched by the rhythms of jazz all around her in Depression-era Kansas City, little Melba Doretta Liston longs to make music in this fictional account of a little-known jazz great. Pham’s illustrator’s note invites young readers to go page by page to learn about the kinds of numbers that captivated Erdos and to meet him among his cherished mathematicians. An extensive author’s note includes a bit more biographical information about Erdos and points to George Csicsery’s 1993 film N is a Number as well as to Heiligman’s website for links for further exploration. She populates his adulthood with his affectionate colleagues, even including a graph with Erdos at the center of several dozen of the great mathematical minds of the 20th century to illustrate the whimsical “Erdos number” concept. She uses a slightly retro palette and line to infuse Erdos’ boyhood surroundings with numbers and diagrams, conveying the idea that young Paul lived and breathed math. The polished, disarming text offers Pham free rein for lively illustration that captures Erdos’ childlike spirit. Erdos was known for his ineptness at practical matters even as he was treasured, housed and fed by those with whom he collaborated in math. Unmoored from the usual ties of home and family once grown, he spent most of his career traveling the world to work with colleagues.
Paul Erdos was sweetly generous throughout his life with the central occupation of his great brain: solving mathematical problems.
Heiligman’s joyful, warm account invites young listeners and readers to imagine a much-loved boy completely charmed by numbers. An exuberant and admiring portrait introduces the odd, marvelously nerdy, way cool Hungarian-born itinerant mathematical genius.
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