America the Beautiful
Skilled watercolor and gouache artist Wendell Minor sets the lyrics to one of America's favorite songs to pictures in this lovingly patriotic tribute.It's hard to imagine a better primer on the history or meaning behind "America the Beautiful" than this--Minor's elegant, evocative illustrations back up each line of Katharine Lee Bates' breathless prose, and an informative introduction by Minor and bios on both Bates and composer Samuel Augustus Ward provide ample background on the song's journey to cultural cult status. Surely, this is a "heartland"-centric homage, but that's no doubt the nature of the song. The images display an older, idealized America, one of absent teepees and endangered buffalos ("For purple mountain majesties/Above the fruited plain!") and white girls in covered wagons ("A thoroughfare for freedom beat/Across the wilderness"). But Minor also alludes to future hope, with a climbing space shuttle ("O beautiful for patriot dream") and the fallen WTC commemorated in lights ("Thine alabaster cities gleam/Undimmed by human tears!").Minor proved his artistic chops in the likes ofShaneand aJohn James Audubon biography, and those skills get put to doting use here, in a primer appropriate for young patriots everywhere. (Ages 4 to 8)--Paul Hughes