14:14 PB ELEMENTS – The Beatles Were Fab – CHARACTER

I remember the day, coming home from church. Dad turned on the radio in our red Ford Galaxy 500. We sat there in our skinny black ties, hearing music we’d never heard before. “Who’s that?” we asked. “Just a bunch of long haired hippies the communists are sending over to ruin our country,” Dad said. It was our first exposure to “The Fab Four.”

The Beatles Were Fab
authors Kathleen Krull
& Paul Brewer
illustrator Stacy Innerst

(c) 2012,
Harcourt Children’s Books

(1,924 words, AR Reading Level 4.8)

This is a fun book between jelly-bean end pages. Rich illustration by Stacy Innerst accompanies the story of the Fab Four, those famous boys from Liverpool who changed the sound of modern music with not only their tunes, but their characters.

After reading this story, I wonder if they’d had to depend only on music, whether they would have had the impact they are famous for. Television and radio, through the the power of airwaves, revealed so much of their individual character as their popularity spread.  Character is what made them ‘fabulous’ as much, if not more, than their music.

Krull and Brewer reveal who they were in this delightful account, with a focus on their humor and their ability to make people laugh.

“From the time they got together as lads until they became superstars, the Fab Four made music, made history, and made people laugh.”

The story shows their determination, their hard work, their confidence.  Always, it seems, flavored by humor. When they first performed for the Royal Family,

“John invited the main-floor audience to clap along. Then he peered up at the dignified royal family in the box seats. ‘And the rest of you, if you just rattle your jewelry.”  Everyone giggled–even the Queen Mother.”

Two spreads offer questions reporters would often ask, a page each for John, Paul, Ringo, and George. Their quick answers show their wit:

Q: How did you find America?
Ringo: We went to Greenland and made a left turn.

Certainly the ‘fab’ in fabulous describes much about the Beatles, but it’s more than just the music, and this books makes that clear for a generation of children who have no idea who they really were, and what they meant to my generation and musical history.

Only a few years after listening to my first Beatles song on the car radio, I had full-sized posters of those long-haired hippies on my bedroom walls, and I was strumming their tunes on my own guitar.

And, of course, I was smiling.

(See a list of other reviewers’ posts in Christi’s latest post at Write Wild.)