Category Archives: Back Matter

Back Matter Break Down: Jimi: Sounds Like A Rainbow

Welcome to another edition of Back Matter Break Down! Today’s post features a book with unique and fascinating back matter that I have remembered and thought about often in the years since I first read it. Let’s dive in!

Book cover of Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow, which features art work of young Jimi Hendrix playing a white guitar

Book: JIMI: SOUNDS LIKE A RAINBOW

Author: Gary Golio

Illustrator: Javaka Steptoe

Publisher / Year: Clarion Books, 2010

Genre: Non Fiction

Topics: Biography, Music, Musicians

Blurb: “Jimi Hendrix was many things: a superstar, a rebel, a hero, an innovator. But first, he was a boy named Jimmy who loved to draw and paint and listen to records. A boy who played air guitar with a broomstick and longed for a real guitar of his own. A boy who asked himself a question: Could someone paint pictures with sound?
This a story of a talented child who learns to see, hear, and interpret the world around him in his own unique way. It is also a story of a determined kid with a vision, who worked hard to become a devoted and masterful artist. Jimi Hendrix–a groundbreaking performer whose music shook the very foundations of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Book Word Count: 1740

Back Matter Word Count: 1150 words plus references

Back Matter Sections:

1. “More About Jimi Hendrix” – 2-page spread biography written by the author (about 550 words)

In this section, we read a more comprehensive biography of Jimi Hendrix with Gary Golio skipping over the childhood years that are the focus of the book’s narrative. We get a few paragraphs that take us through music career and achievements before switching to an examination of his cultural context. Golio references contemporary figures (like Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King Jr.) and events (the Civil Rights Movement) that were significant to Hendrix’s music and point of view. Finally, this section ends with a paragraph that states Hendrix’s year of death and lets us know his lasting influence and legacy in music history. Overall, this section aims to give readers to get a more complete story about Jimi Hendrix life beyond what they read in the main text.

2. “Author’s Note” – a statement by the author (about 250 words)

The back matter moves on to a second spread for Gary Golio’s author’s note. Here, instead of focusing on Jimi Hendrix’s life, we read about his infamous death. Golio acknowledges the role that drugs and alcohol played in ending Hendrix’s life and explains that many musicians in that era were also experimenting with substances. Golio shares that his experience as a clinical social worker has given him many opportunities to observe the negative causes and effects of substance abuse and addiction on people’s lives. He writes, “In the spirit of recognizing that addiction is a treatable disease, and that deaths like Jimi’s can be prevented, here are some resources for better understanding and addressing the dangers of substance abuse.”

What follows is a heading (WEBSITES) with a list of three websites each geared at different aged readers (three to six, ten to eleven, and young teens). Golio gives a brief 1-2 sentence description of the websites followed by their URL links.

After the websites, there is another heading (BOOKS) with three book sources listed in MLA format. There appears to be one book aimed at adults on effective communication with kids, and two books aimed at kids/youth on dealing with their problems and understanding substance abuse.

3. “Illustrator’s Note: Exploring the Inspiration Behind the Music” – a statement by the artist (about 350 words)

As hinted at in the title, illustrator Javaka Steptoe shares the ways he immersed himself in the life of Jimi Hendrix while working on this book. Steptoe reveals that he not only listened to Hedrix’s music, but also travelled to his childhood school and home. Steptoe states he purchased wood in Seattle, Hendrix’s hometown, which he used for the book’s artwork. He also found inspiration in trying to see the world through Jimi Hendrix’s eyes, keeping in mind the rainbow of colors and sounds that author Golio brings to life in his text. Steptoe celebrates the individual creativity that Jimi Hendrix embodied, as well as the potential creativity uniquely found in each of us.

4. “Sources and Resources” – This final page of the book for the reference section is further divided into three type of sources:

Books – There are seven books listed using the MLA Works Cited formatting. Of the seven books, most are biographies about Jimi Hendrix, except for one collection of Jimi Hendrix’s own writings, and a book by Hendrix’s father about his son.

Selected Discography: CDs, Videos and DVDs – The author lists a mix of albums by Jimi Hendrix and his bands, as well as a few recorded live performances on DVD.

Websites – There are two websites listed: Jimi Hendrix’s official website, and the website for a music museum in Seattle.

Takeaways: Author Gary Golio’s text of Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow stays firmly focused on Jimi Hendrix’s youth and his introduction to playing and performing music. With that in mind, Golio uses the back matter to fill in the blanks in give readers more information about his subject’s adult life, career and musical legacy. In doing so, he is forced to deal with the messy reality of Jimi Hendrix’s life, specifically the drug use which led to his untimely death. Rather than gloss over that fact, Golio takes time to discuss the issue head on. He relies on his professional expertise to explain substance abuse in a way young readers can understand while not judging or stigmatizing Hendrix or others who may be struggling with this disease. With the additional resources he provides for further study, Golio finds a way to tell readers about all the interesting and colorful aspects of Jimi Hendrix’s life, including the shades of gray that are often sidestepped in books for children.

Tips: Picture book biographies often focus on a specific era of the subject’s life, so use your back matter space to cover the years that don’t fit into your main narrative. If your subject’s life story touches on difficult topics, your back matter could be the place to dive into that complexity. Help your readers to appreciate that every hero has flaws and failures, but that doesn’t mean their stories aren’t worth sharing.

Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment to add to the conversation or suggest a book for a future blog post!

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Back Matter Break Down: A Walk In the Woods

Welcome to the Back Matter Break Down! I’m so happy you’ve decided to join me on this new project. I am excited for some special guests who will be joining me in coming weeks! I think we’re all going to learn a lot, but let’s dive into our first ever break down:

Book: A WALK IN THE WOODS

Author: Nikki Grimes

Illustrator(s): Jerry Pinkney, Brian Pinkney

Publisher, Year: Neal Porter Books, 2023

Genre: Fiction

Topics: Grief, Nature, Poetry

Blurb: “Confused and distraught after the death of his father, a boy opens an envelope he left behind and is surprised to find a map of the woods beyond their house, with one spot marked in bright red. But why? The woods had been something they shared together, why would his father want him to go alone? Slowly, his mind settles as he sets off through the spaces he once explored with his dad, passing familiar beech and black oak trees, flitting Carolina wrens, and a garter snake they named Sal. When he reaches the spot marked on the map, he finds pages upon pages of drawings of woodland creatures, made by his father when he was his age. What he sees shows him a side of his dad he never knew, and something even deeper for them to share together. His dad knew what he really needed was a walk in the woods.”

Back Matter Word Count: about 780

Back Matter Sections:

1. An Author’s Note from Nikki Grimes titled “A Note About the Journey” (about 350 words):

In her note, Nikki Grimes shares how the idea for this story was birthed in conversation and collaboration with illustrator Jerry Pinkney. Readers will understand how their friendship and desire to work together kicked off the whole project and allowed them to have such an inspiring working relationship. Grimes then explains that the book’s status was left in limbo after the death of Jerry Pinkney. Grimes describes her grief over the loss of her friend, and the feeling of uncertainty about their book being incomplete. The section has a bittersweet ending as she reveals that Jerry Pinkney finished the sketches for this book before he died, and his son, illustrator Brian Pinkney, was able to step in to complete the book.

2. An Illustrator’s Note from Brian Pinkney titled “A Walk to My Heart” (about 430 words)

Here, Brian Pinkney picks up the story of how this book came into being. He describes his participation in this project as a “mysterious and mystical” experience. We see how closely Brian and Jerry Pinkney’s story mirrors the book’s fictional story of a boy experiencing grief and connecting with his father through a shared love of nature and art. Brian Pinkney gives us a glimpse into his artistic process as he explains that the paintings used for this book were created shorty before his father died. While those pieces were not intended for this book, we learn that another family member, illustrator Charnelle Pinkney, was able to use computer rendering to seamlessly combine Jerry Pinkney’s sketches with Brian Pinkney’s watercolor.

Takeaways: In their back matter notes, Nikki Grimes and Brian Pinkney give readers insight into the process of how their book came into being, from idea to finished product. The back matter in A Walk in Woods is interesting for its window into the world of publishing, but what made it so memorable to me was reading how Grimes and Pinkney navigate a professional project combined with deeply personal loss. By sharing their stories, they help readers appreciate the work and legacy of the late Jerry Pinkney. This back matter adds extra layers of emotion to the story and encourages us to read with a new perspective. Getting to know more about the book’s creators made the story that much more poignant. Upon re-reading A Walk in the Woods, I found myself studying how Jerry Pinkney’s sketches and Brian Pinkney’s watercolors play off each other using my newfound understanding of how these two elements came together.

Tips: Consider using your back matter to give readers a glimpse into the journey you went on to create your book–but think about going deeper than craft, revising, and publishing. You can add extra layers of meaning to your book by getting personal about the ways your life story and experiences connect with the one you are telling. The truths you reveal about yourself could end up being an important legacy for you, or someone else.

Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment to add to the conversation or suggest a book for me to break down!

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