The TeachingBooks Blog
A customer from Kershaw County, South Carolina recently asked us to create original multimedia resources with author Jordan Sonnenblick. In this original Meet-the-Author Book Reading Jordan shares the events and people in his life who inspired him to write Curveball: The Year I Lost My Grip.
I thought a lot about the impact of violence as I wrote Burn Baby Burn (Candlewick 2016). My protagonist Nora Lopez would have seen a lot that year, both inside her own family and in situations all around her.
My family listened to music in the morning as we prepared for the day, and at night as we cleaned the dinner dishes. I grew up on a steady diet of the R&B and soul music of the Jackson 5, Bobby Womack, and James Brown. Of Soul Train Saturday mornings and church service choir stands on Sundays. I sampled disco and devoured rap. But my roots were jazz and blues and the musical greatness of Erroll Garner and Oscar Peterson, Bobby “Blue” Bland and John Lee Hooker. Music is the heart and soul of me.
