Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl Ballads

Starred review from March 15, 2016
This land was made for you and me. Every grade-schooler in America learns the refrain from the popular folk song, This Land is Your Land, but not much about Woody Guthrie, the singer, songwriter, and activist who wrote it. This fictionalized biography follows Guthrie through his early, formative years as he and his family struggled to survive the destitute poverty of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Increasingly disillusioned with American politics and the government's abandonment of its poorest citizens, Guthrie was compelled to speak out, tirelessly crisscrossing the nation to entertain and advocate for the nation's poorest people with his songs, eventually earning himself a permanent place as one of America's great folk heroes. This sympathetic portrait offers an engaging and accessible look at Guthrie's personal life, the political climate of the 1930's, and the physical landscapes Guthrie loved so much. Gorgeously rendered in a sepia-toned palette with broad black outlines, the expressive, woodcut-like illustrations and varied lettering styles quietly evoke the time period, while the stylized figures capture the haunted looks of people with nothing left to lose. While Guthrie's eccentricities no doubt caused more family difficulty than is shown here, this captivating marriage of art and words offers a revealing, evocative look at this complex, talented American icon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)