Passing the Music Down

Gr 2–6—When nine-year-old Jake Krack's parents drove from Indiana to the hills of Appalachia to hear Melvin Wine play his fiddle, no one could have predicted that the 86-year-old would become the boy's best friend and mentor. Though Melvin ran a cattle farm and worked in the coal mines of West Virginia for 37 years, he came from a long line of musicians and played at many competitions and festivals in the '60s and '70s. Sarah Sullivan's moving story (Candlewick, 2011) about the special connection and friendship between the old man and his protégée will inspire young musicians and give listeners an appreciation of traditional folk music. Melvin and Jack flip flapjacks, hunt ginseng in the woods, and pick runners from the garden before they sit down on the porch to play "tunes older than the towns the boy traveled through, tunes old as the mist and twisty as the roads." Over the years, they play together at many gatherings. When the old man can no longer get out of bed, the young man assures him, "I'll teach folks all your tunes. There's a part of you that will always be around." While Barry Root's warm and expressive watercolor-and-gouache illustrations capture the bond between the two protagonists along with the beauty of the land, listening to the story with the fiddle and banjo music in the background and narrator Kirby Ward's country twang truly brings it to life. Page-turn signals are optional. There's also an author's note about these two noted fiddlers, and a fast version of the fiddle song, "Yew Piney Mountain."—Barbara Auerbach, P.S. 217, Brooklyn, NY