Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | PICTURE BOOK GOL | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | J 921 DYLAN | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | J 921 DYLAN | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
An enchanting, true story of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Bob Dylan, and his mentor, Woody Guthrie.
"Hey hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song..."
When Bob finished, Woody's face lit up like the sun.
Bob Dylan is a musical icon, an American legend, and, quite simply, a poet. But before he became Bob Dylan, he was Bob Zimmerman, a kid from rural Minnesota.
This lyrical and gorgeously illustrated picture book biography follows Bob as he renames himself after his favorite poet, Dylan Thomas, and leaves his mining town to pursue his love of music in New York City. There, he meets his folk music hero and future mentor, Woody Guthrie, changing his life forever.
Author Notes
This is Gary Golio 's second picture book. He lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife, author Susanna Reich, a cat, and a fire-bellied toad.
Marc Burckhardt was born in Germany, but grew up as a proud Texan. He graduated from Baylor University and now teaches illustration at Texas State University. He lives in Austin, TX.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
How do you explain Bob Dylan to a generation raised on Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber? With lyrical, plainspoken writing that echoes folk music itself, Golio (Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow) portrays the young Dylan as a teenager driven by both his music ("He'd fall asleep with the guitar in his lap, and he'd even forget to bathe or brush his teeth") and his sense of alienation ("Teased for being Jewish, for being different, Bob kept his angry feelings locked inside"). Dylan's determination to find a "bigger, brighter world" and his belief that Guthrie and his music are "the North Star" gives the narrative momentum that propels the story to its final pages, where an ailing Guthrie gives the young troubadour his blessing. Burckhardt's (Daddy Loves His Little Girl) crackle-texture, generously scaled acrylics mix stirring portraiture with murallike iconography (a Guthrie LP rises like a sun from the rolling Minnesota hills). Although this book is probably best enjoyed in the presence of a grown-up Dylan fan, children should come away understanding that not every performer needs spectacle to make an indelible impression. Ages 8-12. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
This full-hearted book celebrates Dylan's pursuit of, and eventual life-changing meeting with, his ailing idol, populist folkie Woody Guthrie. It's a lovely commemoration of a legendary encounter, with much dutiful ramp-up about Dylan's younger days. Each of Burckhardt's crackle-surfaced paintings, whether a vignette or a double-page spread, is beautifully composed to thoughtfully and effectively highlight the events. Bib. (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Jimi: Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix, 2010) produces another sensitively written, meticulously researched picture biography, this time capturing the intense ambition of the young Bob Dylan. Born Robert Zimmerman in Minnesota in 1941, Bob's coming of age as a small-town Jewish boy trod the converging paths of the folk, blues and rock scenes. Bob challenged authority by listening to and playing music that bucked his family's and community's status quo. The chance to meet his hospital-ridden hero, Woody Guthrie, forms the text's dramatic hook: Bob hitch-hiked east to connect with his hero and his own complex musical destiny. Golio acknowledges Dylan's penchant for self-invention without disparaging it; his high-road approach lends the narrative a distinct kind-heartedness. (In a thoughtful note, the author articulates his approach to teasing out what "rang true" from contradictory research on Dylan and his peers.) Burckhardt's accomplished acrylics combine a warm, Americana-soaked palette with heroic compositions: In one spread, a Woody Guthrie record rises like a sun. Quotations sprinkled throughout the text are scrupulously annotated. Well done. (afterword, sources resources) (Picture book/biography. 6-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
These days Dylan is hardly an Everyman, but the story of his youth is filled with the kind of alienation and passion that young readers know better than anyone. Growing up in Minnesota as Bob Zimmerman, the future superstar dreamed of joining the voices of Muddy Waters and Hank Williams that he heard on the radio, when all he saw around him were small-business owners and miners. But no one spoke to him like folksinger Woody Guthrie. Hearing that Guthrie lay sick in a New York hospital, Dylan hitched a ride, got in to see his hero, and played a few songs. The rest is music history. Golio excels at portraying Zimmerman's angst as he flounders for meaning and even invents for himself a more colorful backstory. Burckhardt's acrylics have the fractured look of damaged paintings, and what they lack in energy they make up for in gravity and emotion. Back matter, including quotation sources, is superb. A stirring introduction to two music legends.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books 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.
