?Passing The Music Down? gets NYT review ? West Virginia Book Festival

?Passing The Music Down,? Charleston children?s author Sarah Sullivan?s homage to the relationship between fiddlers Melvin Wine and Jake Krack, got a review in The New York Times over the weekend.

Sean Wilentz, who teaches history at Princeton University, writes that:

At first, ?Passing the Music Down? seems to be a sweet, corny tale about going native. ? 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 details about the two fiddlers flesh out the storybook version. ? Suddenly, a story that verged on sentimental fluff ? though enlivened by [illustrator Barry] Root?s evocative clover and mountain mist ? is part of musical history, and it is all the better for it.

Why, you might wonder, is an Ivy League historian writing about this book? Well, among other works, Wilentz is the author of ?Bob Dylan in America,? released last fall. And his Sullivan review is grouped with a review of ?When Bob Met Woody,? an account of the meeting between a young Bob Dylan and his folk-singing idol, Woody Guthrie. Both books, Wilentz says, explore the idea of handing folk music down from generation to generation, while acknowledging that it doesn?t just happen like the changing of the seasons; actual people, like Wine and Krack and Guthrie and Dylan, make it happen.

One final note about ?Passing The Music Down?: Taylor Books in Charleston will hold a release party for the book on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m. ? and Jake Krack will be there, with his fiddle.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16, 2011 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Appalachia, Children's books, West Virginia, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://blogs.wvgazette.com/wvbookfestival/2011/05/16/passing-the-music-down-gets-nyt-review/

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