In 1920s New Orleans, eighteen-year-old Zora, banished after an incident in Harlem, struggles with her overbearing family, magical powers, love of jazz, and forbidden romance with a white man.

One night at the Hotel Midnight, the lyrics written and sung by jazz musician Rat are those inspired by his friendship with Bat, who plays the piano and writes the tunes.

In the summer of 1988, twelve-year-old Chuck Bell is sent to stay with his grandparents, where he discovers jazz and basketball and learns more about his family's past.

After lunch at a very crowded jazz cafe, a boy and his Auntie Nina are inspired to create a feast of their own with such treats as Thelonious Monk Fish and Nat King Cole Slaw.

Seeking directions to town, a fly picks up the rhythm of the answers he gets from a frog, a hog, a donkey and a dog, and then uses these sounds to jazz up his band's music.

When a mouse scurries into a house and starts to play jazz music, other animals join in, one by one, each using his or her own particular talent.

Based on his adventures with Neal Cassady, Kerouac tells the story of two friends, whose four cross-country road trips are a quest for meaning and true experience. Teeming with the rhythms of fifties underground America, jazz, illicit drugs, and the mystery and promise of the open road, Kerouac's novel of freedom and longing defined what it meant to be "Beat"--Adapted from publisher description

John Coltrane's musical composition is performed by a box, a snowflake, some raindrops, and a kitten.

Dai forms a jazz band. He meets a brilliant pianist, and is looking for a third man to join.

"In this poignant coming of age young adult novel Sterling Crawford is a young African American kid living in New Orleans in 1906 learning about jazz, the legendary Buddy Bolden and forced to face racism, a loaded justice system and racial barriers that divide a nation."--