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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J 921 GUTHRIE | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Woody Guthrie spent his life putting into words and music what the rest of America was thinking. He roamed from coast to coast and captured the despair of those displaced by the Great Depression and the dust bowl, eulogized workers, and celebrated the great natural beauty of America. This is an introductory biography presented as a picture book with a brief lyrical text and powerful, hand-tinted, woodcut-like illustrations. It includes the complete lyrics to "This Land Is Your Land" and excerpts from his other songs. A book for all ages, it makes this talented and tragic man accessible to young children and will please his older folksinging fans with its stunning art.
Author Notes
Bonnie Christensen was born in Saranac Lake, New York in 1951. She received a bachelor's degree in theatre and communication from the University of Vermont. She worked backstage at Joseph Papp's Public Theater, the Actor's Studio, and other studios in New York City for 13 years. She also wrote several plays that were produced off-off Broadway.
She was an author, artist, and book illustrator. Her first book, An Edible Alphabet, was published in 1994. She wrote and illustrated a number of picture books including Django: World's Greatest Jazz Guitarist, Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People, Fabulous: A Portrait of Andy Warhol, The Daring Nelly Bly: America's Star Reporter, A Single Pebble: A Story of the Silk Road, and Elvis: The Story of the Rock and Roll King. She died of ovarian cancer on January 12, 2015 at the age of 63.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seemingly tapping into the tone of Guthrie's own lyrics, Christensen's (Breaking into Print) folksy, sometimes plaintive narrative offers a resonant profile of this songwriter's life and work. Born in Oklahoma in 1912 to parents who were both fond of singing, Guthrie throughout his childhood "heard the songs that swept across the prairie wind and rain songs, thunder rumbling, lightning crackling songs." The author incorporates snippets of Guthrie's lyrics as she follows his peripatetic path, first to west Texas where he learned to play the guitar and gravitated toward "old-time country music that got people laughing and forgetting their worries" and later to California. Christensen deftly reveals how Guthrie's songwriting was propelled by the issues of his era; he sang his "Dust Bowl ballads" on the radio in Los Angeles and, moved by the plight of unemployed migrant farm workers, coal miners and factory hands, he "became their voice, and songs were his way of speaking." His articulate and far-ranging voice rings clearly through these pages, which feature the full lyrics to "This Land Is Your Land" sprawled in oversize hand lettering across the top of each spread. Reminiscent of woodcuts, the mixed-media, earth-toned illustrations creatively evoke the period and the variegated landscapes of this gifted performer's life. All ages. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Primary) Beginning with Guthrie's hardscrabble life in Oklahoma immediately preceding the Great Depression, Christensen traces his wanderings across the United States and the societal influences that informed his music. The words to all seven verses of ""This Land Is Your Land,"" hand-lettered in an irregular script, border the text and unify the book, with page breaks interrupting stanzas and lines to make the song seem as pervasive as a dust storm. While a sturdy black line evokes a visual sense of woodcuts, this color is also reflected in heavy borders that confine most illustrations, paralleling the limited options of both Guthrie and an impoverished nation. Hopeful yellow, warm brown, and soothing blue lightly shade farm fields and migrant camps. These colors soften the mood and offer a promise of better times to come to both a land and its people. The historical background never overburdens the text, yet it creates a rich context for understanding the relationship between Guthrie's experiences and his work, allowing readers to discover a subtle theme: patriotic symbols are born in protest and discontent. Nicely formatted back matter gives a time line of events in Guthrie's life. This picture-book biography masterfully blends the elements of two genres; it is well told, perfectly paced, and beautifully illustrated. b.c. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 3singer Woody Guthrie led a dramatic and colorful life, and one touched by tragedy. Christensen makes a fine union of a spirited, vibrant text and hand-colored woodcuts that are sinewy and emotionally compelling. Born in Oklahoma, Guthrie knew hard times early: his sister dead, his father without work, his mother lost to a strange "nervous disorder." But he found music everywhere, and when he took to the road as a teenager he made music that said "what everybody in the country was thinking." Christensen uses the words to "Union Maid," "Do Re Mi," "Riding in My Car," and above all, "This Land Is Your Land" to punctuate events in Woody's life, and she makes clear his strong belief in the power of labor unions and of people coming together to make change. His mother's disease was Huntington's, which took Guthrie's own life in 1967. A chronology is included, but alas, not a bibliography or a discography.--GraceAnne A. DeCandido
School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 4-An introductory biography in a picture-book format. The particulars of Guthrie's life unfold chronologically, starting with his birth in 1912. Readers learn of his young years in Oklahoma and the difficulties the family endured when his father lost his job, and his mother died. When he was 17, his father went to Texas, and Guthrie was left to fend for himself. He learned to play the guitar and began writing songs. He crisscrossed America several times, talking to workers along the way, and became the voice of the poor throughout the Great Depression. After World War II, he settled down, had a family, and began writing and singing happier songs. A conclusion supplies further information about him. The song "This Land Is Your Land" is painted across the tops of the pages. End matter contains all seven verses of it (without the music) and a list of important events in Guthrie's life. Mixed-media paintings have the look of woodcuts, and include a lot of black and heavy black line. This Land Is Your Land (Little, Brown, 1998), illustrated by Kathy Jakobsen, features the same song as this book, with music, and a tribute by Pete Seeger that gives almost as much information as is found here. The subject matter is of limited appeal to today's youth, so purchase only where you feel there is a need for and/or to complement existing material.-Kathleen Simonetta, Indian Trails Public Library District, Wheeling, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
This moving biography honors the life and work of the legendary folk singer who celebrated the lives of working people all over the US. Guthrie, born in Oklahoma in 1912, came from a poor family filled with music, but devastated by death and illness. As a youngster, he absorbed the sounds of country living and the traditional music of Oklahoma and Texas. Later, during the Great Depression, he used these memories to become a popular voice for the dust bowl refugees, writing and singing about them and performing on radio in Los Angeles. He spent years moving from place to place in support of the union movement, migrant field workers, and coal miners. Christensen (Moon Over Tennessee, 1999, etc.) writes briefly of his marriages, his children, and his eventual tragic death from Huntington's disease, but the thrust is his devotion to the cause of downtrodden workers. The words of his signature song "This Land is Your Land" run along the top of each page and are printed in their entirety at the end along with a timeline and Web site citation. (No bibliography or source notes are included.) Christensen's text is strong and beautiful, as rich in images as her subject's music. Through them, the reader will get a wonderful sense of the soul of her subject and his times. Read aloud, this could work for younger readers, but the dramatic mixed media, woodcut-like illustrations in a picture-book format will attract older ones as well. A powerful, lyrical tribute to the musician whose music is so much a part of our lives. (Biography. 8-10)
