Winner of a Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor and a Robert F. Sibert Honor!

Celebrate music icon Carlos Santana in this vibrant, rhythmic picture book from the author of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters.

Carlos Santana loved to listen to his father play el violín. It was a sound that filled the world with magic and love and feeling and healing—a sound that made angels real. Carlos wanted to make angels real, too. So he started playing music.

Carlos tried el clarinete and el violín, but there were no angels. Then he picked up la guitarra. He took the soul of the Blues, the brains of Jazz, and the energy of Rock and Roll, and added the slow heat of Afro-Cuban drums and the cilantro-scented sway of the music he’d grown up with in Mexico. There were a lot of bands in San Francisco but none of them sounded like this. Had Carlos finally found the music that would make his angels real? - (Simon and Schuster)

Winner of a Pura Belpré Illustrator Honor and a Robert F. Sibert Honor!

Celebrate music icon Carlos Santana in this vibrant, rhythmic picture book from the author of the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Book Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters.

Carlos Santana loved to listen to his father play el violín. It was a sound that filled the world with magic and love and feeling and healing'a sound that made angels real. Carlos wanted to make angels real, too. So he started playing music.

Carlos tried el clarinete and el violín, but there were no angels. Then he picked up la guitarra. He took the soul of the Blues, the brains of Jazz, and the energy of Rock and Roll, and added the slow heat of Afro-Cuban drums and the cilantro-scented sway of the music he'd grown up with in Mexico. There were a lot of bands in San Francisco but none of them sounded like this. Had Carlos finally found the music that would make his angels real? - (Simon and Schuster)

Michael Mahin has loved music since his grandmother gave him his first piano lesson at the age of five. Like Carlos Santana, he believes that music fills the world with magic and love and feeling and healing. He is the author of Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters and enjoys writing books about people who use their creativity to make the world a better place. He lives in San Diego, California, with his wife, two kids, and several guitars he wishes he played better. Visit him at MichaelMahin.com.

Jose Ramirez is a fine artist and an illustrator of children's books, including Quinito's Neighborhood/El vecindario de Quinito; Goodnight, Papito Dios/Buenas noches, Papito Dios; and The Frog and His Friends Save Humanity/La rana y sus amigos salvan a la humanidad. He has been a school teacher in Los Angeles for more than twenty-five years and is currently teaching third grade at Esperanza Elementary. He loves to garden, play music, and work with clay. The proud father of three daughters, Jose lives in east Los Angeles with his wife and youngest child. - (Simon and Schuster)

Michael Mahin has loved music since his grandmother gave him his first piano lesson at the age of five. Like Carlos Santana, he believes that music fills the world with magic and love and feeling and healing. He is the author of Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters and enjoys writing books about people who use their creativity to make the world a better place. He lives in San Diego, California, with his wife, two kids, and several guitars he wishes he played better. Visit him at MichaelMahin.com.

Jose Ramirez is a fine artist and an illustrator of children’s books, including Quinito’s Neighborhood/El vecindario de Quinito; Goodnight, Papito Dios/Buenas noches, Papito Dios; and The Frog and His Friends Save Humanity/La rana y sus amigos salvan a la humanidad. He has been a school teacher in Los Angeles for more than twenty-five years and is currently teaching third grade at Esperanza Elementary. He loves to garden, play music, and work with clay. The proud father of three daughters, Jose lives in east Los Angeles with his wife and youngest child.  - (Simon and Schuster)

Booklist Reviews

*Starred Review* As he did in his 2017 biography of Muddy Waters, Mahin celebrates the music of a popular artist while delving into the soul from which it springs. In the case of Carlos Santana, according to Mahin, it is his deep desire to make music so glorious the angels would listen, just as his father's violin music seemed to fill the world with "magic and love." But throughout his life, Santana has struggled. As a youth, he tried several instruments unsuccessfully. His mother moved him to Tijuana, where he dressed in costume and played popular songs on the violin for tourist coins. It was there that he heard guitar music and learned to play. In exhilarating language, peppered with Spanish words—and often invoking angels—the narrative brings Santana to San Francisco as his musical abilities, his sense of self, and a growing awareness about injustice fuse just as the various musical influences—­blues, jazz, ­Afro-Caribbean—fuse to make his sound. The story ends at Woodstock, but an afterword chronicles the rest. Mahin's words match well with Ramirez's intense, beautifully colored folk art, a mosaic of brown faces, young and old. The pictures demand second, even third looks whether Santana is playing at Aquatic Park or sweeping the floor at Tick Tock Burgers. A biography fitting of the man's music. Grades K-3. Copyright 2018 Booklist Reviews.

Horn Book Guide Reviews

Mahin's staccato second-person text ("Los congas rumbled into your chest. There was magic in their beat...") lends immediacy to his account of Santana's youth, touching on migration, racial discrimination, and poverty in a manner both accessible and deep. Ramirez's full-bleed Mexican folk artinfluenced acrylic and enamel-marker illustrations expertly capture mood and propel the narrative forward. An author's note contextualizes Santana's place in American popular culture. Bib. Copyright 2019 Horn Book Guide Reviews.

Horn Book Magazine Reviews

Carlos Santana's 1971 rendition of Tito Puente's classic Latin jazz anthem "Oye Como Va" still elicits instant recognition, perhaps because Santana's signature guitar communicates the essence of Latino sabor. Two new picture-book biographies center Santana's formative years and the experiences that shaped his musical corazón. In Carlos Santana, Golio presents a chronological account of Santana's boyhood growing up in the birthplace of mariachi music—Jalisco, Mexico—where his father teaches him to read music and play violin, and later buys him his first guitar. The acute pain of separation felt "when Papá is gone—sometimes for months—?earning money" balances against Gutierrez's tender and realistic rendering of Santana's mother, who moves her family to Tijuana to seek a better life. Brown faces predominate in the swirling, psychedelic, sixties-inspired acrylic illustrations, illuminating the centrality of family despite Santana's at-times contentious relationship with his father. In When Angels Sing, Mahin's staccato second-person text ("One day, you went to Aquatic Park. Los congas rumbled into your chest. There was magic in their beat. A breath. A breeze. A feeling") lends immediacy to his account of Santana's youth. Mahin relates the boy's experiences of migration (first within Mexico and then to San Francisco), racial discrimination, and poverty in a manner both accessible and deep. He shows how Santana's brother's activism and determination during California's 1960s farmworkers' struggle inspires Santana to keep playing guitar and never give up ("If they can, I can"). Ramirez's full-bleed Mexican-folk-art–influenced acrylic and enamel marker illustrations expertly capture mood and propel the narrative forward, subtly incorporating year stamps on many spreads to mark the passage of time. While both books cover similar events in Santana's boyhood, Mahin's buoyant and lyrical storytelling allows the reader closer proximity to the musician's world. Author's notes and bibliographies in each book contextualize Santana's place in American popular culture; Golio's book also appends a glossary. lettycia terrones Copyright 2018 Horn Book Magazine Reviews.

Kirkus Reviews

From the three-way scrimmage among his great-aunt, his father, and his mother for the right to name him—his mother won—to his growth as a musician, Carlos yearns to hear the song of angels. Instrument after instrument fails to resonate within his heart until the chords of a guitar stand his arm hairs on end. "An angel's breath?" But not even his beloved guitar can drown out the English-speaking bullies in San Francisco schools, so he runs away and returns to Tijuana. His family, however disagrees. They'd left Mexico for a better life, and they will not let Carlos stay behind. Bit by bit, the city's diverse cultural harmonies become one: "the soul of the blues,…the brains of jazz,…the energy of rock and roll…the slow heat of Afro-Cuban drums and the cilantro-scented sway of the music you'd grown up with." The Santana Blues Band plays through Carlos' homesickness, plays through Martin Luther King Jr.'s death, plays through Vietnam's destruction and America's unrest, until, in front of 400,000 people in Woodstock, the angels finally sing—not to but within Carlos. Ramírez's double-page-spread acrylic-and-enamel-marker images evoke the vibrant electric energy of Huichol yarn art. The years denoting milestones in Carlos' story subtly blend into the multicolored pages. Mahin's second-person lyrical narrative unites the disparate elements that ultimately became Santana. A musical journey perfectly aimed at young readers' excitement to know what they will be. (author's note, bibliography, discography) (Picture book/biography. 6-11) Copyright Kirkus 2018 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.