Walter Dean Myers

Blues Journey Walter Dean Myers First edition

The opening verse of this latest father/son collaboration probes the very essence of a form--and a feeling; it asks the question that anyone who has sought solace in music can relate to. The pair's first composition wandered through a Harlem collage, depicting "a call, a song, the mood indigo, a language of darkness." This new duet is the blues: verbally and visually, it explores the idiom while exemplifying it. A call and response accompanies each painting. As the journey progresses, the lyrics and art look at loss through the lenses of slavery, poverty, lynching, love spurned, fear of dying and of living. An author's note provides a lucid description of the history, elements, and importance of the blues.