Young siblings are lured into a late-night musical adventure by the beckoning sound of their father's jazz band in The Band in Our Basement, a tuneful and exuberant picture book by Kelly J. Baptist, with illustrations from Jenin Mohammed.
On the title page a child spots visitors in their driveway at bedtime. "Daddy's band is in our basement.../ We can't fall asleep!" Mama gives a knowing glance while tucking in the narrator's brother, then backs from the room with a loving directive: "Go right to bed/ and do not make a peep!" But a trumpet soon sounds while a bass guitar thrums and, before long, the siblings are silently dancing on their beds. With the page turn, "Kenny grins and whispers" a plan to "sneak downstairs and watch them play." When the narrator concedes, the pair tiptoe--"Careful, careful down the stairs"--and are caught almost immediately. The band extends an invitation to join them, making the jam session a full family affair.
Baptist rekindles the linguistic exuberance she used in The Electric Slide and Kai by mixing rhyme schemes and occasionally splitting stanzas across page turns to sustain a bopping, jazzy cadence. Mohammed (Song in the City) layers warm golden shades with cool blue tones of the night using gelli print collage and digital mixed-media illustrations. The artist uses jagged marks and sharp angles to effectively indicate the children's movement, and a line that moves sinuously across every page oozes musicality. This toe-tapping read-aloud seems destined to prompt bedtime hijinks among budding musicians in the best possible way. --Kit Ballenger, youth librarian, Help Your Shelf