cover image Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice

Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice

Susanna Reich, illus. by Adam Gustavson. Bloomsbury, $17.99 (48p) ISBN 978-0-8027-3812-7

Reich and Gustavson, who previously collaborated on Fab Four Friends, deliver a rich portrait of musician and activist Pete Seeger, focusing on how his deeply held convictions galvanized his music. Gustavson’s mixed-media illustrations highlight Seeger’s modest upbringing and down-to-earth persona, pairing lushly illustrated scenes of him traveling and performing with rough, loose sketches of unemployed men lined up for free food during the Great Depression, a couch where Seeger rested while on tour, and soldiers wading through a river in Vietnam (Seeger was outraged when one of his protest songs, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” was cut from a television appearance). It’s an intimate look at a pivotal American figure who saw himself, as Reich notes, as a link in “a chain in which music and social responsibility are intertwined.” Ages 6–9. [em]Author’s agent: Edward Necarsulmer IV, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. Illustrator’s agent: Abigail Samoun, Red Fox Literary. (Mar.) [/em]