The Long Gone Lonesome History of Country Music - Hardcover

Bertholf, Bret

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316523933 ISBN 13: 9780316523936

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2007

Synopsis

Filled with incredible illustrations, this rollicking tour takes readers from the dawn of country music through the present. From country hair to country clothes, readers are taken on a journey through a rich cultural history, and along the way, they meet greats like Jimmie Rodgers, Minnie Pearl, and bluegrass musician Bill Monroe. Both thoroughly educational and laugh-aloud silly, this celebration of an American invention is a treasure for parents and children to share.

About this title

About the Author

Bret Bertholf is a painter, writer, musician, and the yodeling singer for Halden Wofford & the Hi Beams, an acclaimed traditional country/western band that recently performed on Prairie Home Companion, as well as the former coordinator of children's events at the Tattered Cover Book Store. He is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. He lives in Denver, CO.

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Grade 4–6—This tongue-in-cheek overview features a folksy narrative of how and why country music developed in the barns and back roads of rural America. The text doesn't miss a beat—it covers instruments, early recordings, yodeling (with a humorous spread on how-to), the Great Depression, gospel, movie cowboys, a "paper-doll" spoof of singers' costumes, hillbilly jazz, World War II, acceptable country pets (hound dogs, varmints, hawgs), country "vee-hickles," Nashville, the age of TV, the 1990s explosion of country sound, and much more. While poking fun at itself with a "country words" dictionary and a segment on "country hair," the book offers a vast amount of historical fact amid a multitude of caricatures of country stars. Some of the pages are quite dark, but the ever-changing backgrounds and fonts with colored-pencil and crayon illustrations carry an amazing variation of detail. The book gets a bit over-the-top with "The Big List of Country Nicknames," stars depicted as winged cupids on the cover, and Hank Williams's problems with pistols, but country-music fans probably will only mind that there are faces not present. A long who's who at the back identifies the performers pictured throughout. Holly George-Warren's Honky-Tonk Heroes & Hillbilly Angels (Houghton, 2006) offers a simple biographical look at a few artists, while Bertholf's broad view goes further to explain the genre to young readers and does so in an entertaining manner.—Mary Elam, Forman Elementary School, Plano, TX
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Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0316523933
• ISBN 13: 9780316523936
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64