Rhythm Ride is a Road Trip through the Motown Sound. It is a children’s novel so it is written in a way that is quick to read and easy to understand. There are also a lot of images throughout, which I always appreciate! The road trip of course begins with Berry Gordy Jr – in Detroit Motor City. It talks about his record company, Hitsville USA and how he built Motown to be more like a family than a record company. Motown had a lot of hitmakers and when you read about them all at once you really get the impact of how successful it was. It talks about how it survived the Detroit riots, the war, etc. The book ends with a timeline from Berry Gordy’s birth and throughout all the signings and releases of the Motown hits. Definitely a lot a great book to read and full of lots of great Motown information presented in an easy to understand format for kids (or big kids, like me)
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.
About the Book
From award-winning author Andrea Davis Pinkney comes the story of the music that defined a generation and a movement that changed the world.
Berry Gordy began Motown in 1959 with an $800 loan from his family. He converted the garage of a residential house into a studio and recruited teenagers from the neighborhood-like Smokey Robinson, Mary Wells, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross-to sing for his new label. Meanwhile, the country was on the brink of a cultural revolution, and one of the most powerful agents of change in the following decade would be this group of young black performers from urban Detroit. From Berry Gordy and his remarkable vision to the Civil Rights movement, from the behind-the-scenes musicians, choreographers, and song writers to the most famous recording artists of the century, Andrea Davis Pinkney takes readers on a Rhythm Ride through the story of Motown