Dark Was The Night: Blind Willie Johnson's Journey to the Stars by Gary Golio, illustrated by E.B. Lewis

Dark Was the Night: Blind Willie Johnson's Journey to the Stars 

by Gary Golio,

illustrated by E. B. Lewis

Nancy Paulsen Books, 2020, 32 pages

One of the things I love most about being a reviewer is that I get to read all kinds of picture books and share them with my young readers. And one of my favorite picture book genres is biography. I have been introduced to so many people I  probably never would have known about otherwise thanks to picture book biographies.  

Take for example this new biography about Willie Johnson, an African American musician. Willie was born in 1897 in a small Texas town. As a young boy, he lost his mother and at age seven, he lost his sight. 

Despite being blind, Willie made music - at first, with a cigar box guitar his father made for him, then in church and later busking on the streets, traveling about Texas with a guitar and a tin cup, hoping for enough money to buy food and get a rented room.

And Willie knew how to sing the blues, sliding his pocket knife up and down the steel strings of his guitar, and giving it a voice of its own.

Discovered on the street by a man from a record company, Willie was given a chance to make a record his music and went on to enjoy a music career. But the one recording that Willie became best known for was a heartbreaking yet hopeful emotional gospel blues song called "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground." 

Small wonder that in 1977, when NASA was choosing what to include on the Golden Record they were sending into space that reflected the diversity of who we are as a people on Earth, a recording of Willie Johnson performing "Dark Was the Night" was chosen with its simple message of hope and a reminder that we are not alone.

Dark Was the Night is not exactly a picture book biography filled with facts, dates and places, and yet, after I finished it, I felt like I knew the real Willie Johnson, the persistent musician who could use music as if it were his own voice to express himself and his truth. And one of the ways the author did this was by contrasting the sources of lightness and darkness that impacted Willie throughout his life. 

And Golio's writing is a perfect compliment to his subject- full of emotion and musicality. He begins Willie's story in deep, dark space and brings it full circle, where his music "shined a light in the darkness and finally touched the stars." 

Adding to Golio's lyrical text are E.B. Lewis's subtle watercolor illustrations done in a palette of predominately dark blues and bright yellows. This is one of my favorite illustrations because I feel it really captures the sense of light and darkness that was so much a part of Willie's life, but not allowing either one to dominate it.

Be sure to read the back matter to learn more about Willie Johnson and the Golden Record that carried his beautiful music into the far reaches of the Universe.

And if you would like to hear Willie playing "Dark Was the Night,", you can find it on YouTube HERE. I have been listening to it repeatedly and I guarantee it is well worth your time.

This book is recommended for readers age 6+

This book was gratefully received from the author, Gary Golio

Sonny's Bridge: Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins Finds His Grove by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Keith Mallett

Sonny's Bridge: Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins Finds His Grove

by Barry Wittenstein, illustrated by Keith Mallett

Charlesbridge, 2019, 40 pages

What better way is there to introduce young readers to some of the world's greatest artists than through a well-done picture book? And Sonny's Bridge is a perfect example of that.

Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins was born in 1930 when the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing - for musicians, that would be literally. Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie and Glenn Miller were some of the jazz greats during Sonny's childhood, popularizing a new swing sound. And Sonny already knew that being a jazz musician was in his future as he practiced his saxophone at home in the closet.

Later, during WWII, Sonny continued to practice, listening to a new generation of musicians, people like Charlie "Bird" Parker and John "Dizzy" Gillespie as they perfected a new sound called bebop. But even though he was too young to join the army, he also began to see the inequalities around him and to demonstrate for equal rights for all African Americans and to end Jim Crow laws.

Sonny and his saxophone Henrietta soon began to get some gigs, playing in "...fancy joints and two-bit joints./Two shows a night, two sets per show" and to gain so much recognition, he found himself playing in Carnegie Hall with other jazz legends.

But somehow, despite his success, at 29 years old, Sonny was dissatisfied and decided to leave the jazz world behind, believing that his name was bigger than his talent, that his fame had come too soon. His life, he decides, needed an intermission.

But as Sonny continued to play, he realized he also needed to finds a place to practice that wouldn't bother the neighbors, a place where he could play as much and as loudly as he needed to, a place that was right in from of his eyes - the Williamsburg Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan. It was the perfect place to reconnect with himself: "seeking refuge and sol-i-tude. Finding inspiration, finding himself/in the echoes of the echoes of the echoes" on the walkway of the bridge.

Eventually, more confident in his sound and himself, Sonny goes back into the recording studio where his music, "enters a new dimension: his subconscious" and within two weeks, a new album with a new sound is produced and appropriately named "The Bridge." Sonny is back and better than ever!

Sonny's Bridge is such a perfectly wrought picture book for older readers. Wittenstein has written the text in a free verse style that resembles a jazzy bebob composition that Sonny might have played himself, capturing all the energy of bebop, and all the passion of this musical genius.

Mallett's digitally illustrations are bold and vibrantly colorful, carrying their own sense of rhythm that compliments both the free verse text and the excitement of the jazz scene to which Sonny belonged over the course of 40 years, from his years as a young listener and learner to his years as a self-assured musician and creator.

I also loved the design of this book as well as the content. Maybe it's because I'm old enough to remember buying record albums before cassettes, CDs, and now Vinyl. Albums always had a colorful cardboard jacket, and inside of it, the record was usually held in a brown paper sleeve with a hole in the center that showed the record label. And that is exactly the sense you get when you open Sonny's Bridge. And in keeping with musical traditon, Sonny's biography is set up like a gig itself - with a first set, and intermission, and a second set that harmonizes perfectly with Sonny's life.

There is plenty of back matter for further exploration into Sonny's life and music, and an excellent curriculum guide is available from the publisher, Charlesbridge, HERE 

This book is recommended for readers age 6+
This book was sent to my by the published, Charlesbridge Publishing