HAPPY FEET

A valentine to the renowned Savoy, narrated by a lad born on the day it opened in 1926 and illustrated with eye-filling watercolors featuring sharply dressed hep cats and hot, high-steppin’ crowds. Young Happy Feet loves to hear his father, owner of a shoeshine shop just across the street, tell about the night he was born, when “all of Harlem togged out in their finest threads,” and “even the rich white dukes came flying in from Hollywood” to swing and fly in the “hottest, coolest, most magnificent, superdeluxe dancing palace.” Closing with a roster of renowned Lindy Hoppers, from Leroy “Stretch” Jones to Big Bea, this tribute will take young readers back to Harlem-as-it-was as persuasively as Debbie Taylor’s Sweet Music in Harlem (2004), illustrated by Frank Morrison or Amy Littlesugar’s Tree of Hope (1999), illustrated by Floyd Cooper. (Picture book. 6-9)