Review by New York Times Review
In these two picture books, an appreciation of folk music is passed from generation to generation. "THE folk process,'' as Pete Seeger has called it, easily lends itself to a populist pastoral myth, with supposedly pure rural tunes handed anonymously from generation to generation. "Passing the Music Down," written by Sarah Sullivan and illustrated by Barry Root, and "When Bob Met Woody," written by Gary Golio and illustrated by Marc Burckhardt, break through the anonymity and illuminate the process, even as they remain at least partly beholden to fabled styling. At first, "Passing the Music Down" seems to be a sweet, corny tale about going native. Come summer, Sullivan writes with a down-home twang, "folks get to talking about tuning up" and heading to the mountains east of Tennessee to listen to the fiddle players and banjo pickers. "Play 'Liza Jane'!" shouts a boy, an aspiring fiddler, to a gnarled country virtuoso. The boy's family then befriends and visits the old fiddler, buying a place in the mountains near his farm. There, the old man and the boy live out a rural idyll as the folk inheritance is bestowed. Years pass, and the old man dies. The boy, now grown, fiddles at festivals and fairs where another little boy inevitably shouts out, "Play 'Liza Jane'!" Only in an author's note at the end do we learn that the story is based on two musicians well known in old-timey music circles: the late Melvin Wine, a grizzled veteran who cut quite a figure during the folk revival of the 1960s, and his eager student, Jake Krack, who has gone on to become an ace fiddler in his own right. The details about the two fiddlers flesh out the storybook version. It turns out, for example, that young Krack's teacher in Indiana encouraged the initial meeting between the two. Suddenly, a story that verged on sentimental fluff - though enlivened by Root's evocative clover and mountain mist - is part of musical history, and it is all the better for it. It is hard to imagine Bob Dylan's life and music as fodder for a children's book, let alone a sentimental one. By sticking to Dylan's early years, though, "When Bob Met Woody" tells a true-life story not entirely unlike that of Wine and Krack. Already familiar to baby boomers, the story will come as news to their children and grandchildren. The ambitious young musician Bob Dylan (born Robert Zimmerman) strikes out from middle-class Minnesota in search of his hero, the hobo songster Woody Guthrie. After finding Guthrie bedridden in a New Jersey asylum, Dylan sings for the stricken man, who warmly approves. Though the setting is Greystone Hospital in Morris Plains, and not the mountains of West Virginia, the folk process has recurred. Golio says he aimed to write "a story that told the truth," and insofar as the truth can be told about Dylan, he has succeeded, making only a couple of trivial factual slips. He charmingly delivers the boy behind the ragamuffin troubadour, doing justice to young Zimmerman's jumbled early musical interests, including rock 'n' roll, however off kilter it seems in the familiar folk romance. "When Bob Met Woody" should stick in young readers' minds, especially if accompanied by the musicians' recordings. Somewhere in Dylan's singular evolving an, Guthrie has always been present. And it's important for children, as it is for the rest of us, to understand that a very particular genius - on the order of Guthrie and Dylan, and Wine and Krack - has a crucial place in the real-life folk process. The folk tradition's intergenerational spirit is explored in "When Bob Met Woody" and, below, "Passing the Music Down." Sean Wilentz teaches history at Princeton. His latest hook, "Bob Dylan in America," will appear in paperback this fall.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [May 15, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
The old man tunes his fiddle / and the boy leans in close. With a fiddler's rhythm and an Appalachian setting, this celebratory picture book honors the lives of two famous folk musicians and the bond between them. Coal miner Melvin Wise loved to play the fiddle and eventually starred in festivals and competitions. He inspired Jack Krack, who traveled with his parents to West Virginia when he was nine years old to become a pupil of elderly Melvin. After Melvin's death, Jack continued to share the music with future generations. Without sentimentality, the beautiful watercolor and gouache paintings show the bond between the boy and his mentor as they work hard on a farm throughout the year and then, when the work is done, play their fiddles by the fire. Their lives are stitched together / In a quilt of old-time tunes. A long author's note with a discography fills in more about the musicians' lives and work, the prizes they won, and the tradition of passing on the music to younger audiences.--Rochman, Haze. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 2-6-When nine-year-old Jake Krack's parents drove from Indiana to the hills of Appalachia to hear Melvin Wine play his fiddle, no one could have predicted that the 86-year-old would become the boy's best friend and mentor. Though Melvin ran a cattle farm and worked in the coal mines of West Virginia for 37 years, he came from a long line of musicians and played at many competitions and festivals in the '60s and '70s. Sarah Sullivan's moving story (Candlewick, 2011) about the special connection and friendship between the old man and his protegee will inspire young musicians and give listeners an appreciation of traditional folk music. Melvin and Jack flip flapjacks, hunt ginseng in the woods, and pick runners from the garden before they sit down on the porch to play "tunes older than the towns the boy traveled through, tunes old as the mist and twisty as the roads." Over the years, they play together at many gatherings. When the old man can no longer get out of bed, the young man assures him, "I'll teach folks all your tunes. There's a part of you that will always be around." While Barry Root's warm and expressive watercolor-and-gouache illustrations capture the bond between the two protagonists along with the beauty of the land, listening to the story with the fiddle and banjo music in the background and narrator Kirby Ward's country twang truly brings it to life. Page-turn signals are optional. There's also an author's note about these two noted fiddlers, and a fast version of the fiddle song, "Yew Piney Mountain."-Barbara Auerbach, P.S. 217, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
As Sullivan explains in an excellent note, Jake Krack was only nine when he and his parents traveled from Indiana to West Virginia to hear noted fiddler Melvin Wine, then eighty-six. Seven years later, in 2002, the boy "became the youngest musician to be named [West Virginia] State Fiddle Champion in the under-sixty category." Inspired by that creative friendship, Sullivan depicts just such an old man and gifted boy, leaving them nameless, adding dialogue, and telling her story with the lyrical, laconic lilt of its Appalachian setting: "'Know any of my music?' asks the old man. The boy lifts his arm and plays 'Peg 'n' Awl,' his chest near to bursting with all that hope inside. 'That's pretty good,' the old man says. 'You got to start with a spin and end with a skid.'" The boy helps with chores; his family moves nearby; and while the old man is "Passing the Music Down" to this worthy successor, they "become the best of friends." The steep Appalachian landscape, the companionable fiddlers, and the appreciative crowds that flock to hear them are captured in gentle gouache and watercolor with a golden tinge of pleasant memories. Altogether, it's a lovely introduction to traditional music. There's a note on the tunes mentioned plus a list of resources: written materials, recordings by both Krack and Wine, videos, and websites. joanna rudge long (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Sullivan reverently celebrates a musical apprenticeship that spans generations in this poetic narrative based on a real-life relationship and punctuated by the titular phrase. A boy with a penchant for "old timey" music travels with his violin and his parents from Indiana to West Virginia to hear and see a legendary fiddler. As the family draws closer geographically to the boy's new mentor, the narrative gently moves back and forth from their initial meeting to the boy's family "putting down roots / in the next county over." The pair shares farm chores as well as hours of musical tutelage and accompaniment. Seasons pass, then years: At the elder's deathbed, the now-teenage youth murmurs, " 'I'll do just like I promised, / I'll teach folks all your tunes. / There's a part of you that / will always be around.' /Passing the music down." Root's sun-dappled watercolor-and-gouache illustrations lovingly depict rural West Virginia's farms and fairs along with the respectful interplay between a twosome knit together by a deep-seated commitment to musical folkways. Sullivan's notes, on Melvin Wine and Jake Krack and the tunes, round out a lovely, resonant offering.(resources) (Picture book. 5-8)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
