The Fastest Drummer: Clap Your Hands for Viola Smith!

Gr 1-3–With endpapers of all the sticks and brushes one can use with a drum, this book opens right up to a promise that something fun and loud is about to happen. Then the title page appears where there are musical instruments and girls with curls. We see brushstrokes swirl, notes twirl, and sounds seem to rise from the paper. The book has not started, officially, but readers will be all in for the story of the Smith Sisters Orchestra: five strong, but they’re considering adding a drummer—the sixth sister, Viola. She tries the snare, the tom-tom, the ride cymbal, and the hi-hats. She takes to the drums ferociously and the sisters entertain, adding two more siblings until they are eight sisters, traveling and performing across the Midwest in the 1920s. As the other sisters grow up and lose interest, Smith continues, always learning more, getting faster, playing through World War II, uplifting other female performers, and still drumming as a 100-year-old. As a biography, this captures the verve and brio of Smith’s love for her art, delivering the facts with a rat-a-tat pace that parallels the life Robbins is covering. The pages are great fun; Chapman’s expressive linework gives Smith’s face an elasticity that always lets readers know what she’s up to. It’s practically a primer on drums and their parts. But our heroinr starts loud and ends loud. Every page is frenetic and there’s no arc. Children will love the tumble through these pages, and then they’ll be on to the next thing.