The Golden Thread, Meloy

With dazzling, lyrical verse in the folk revival style and stunning cut-paper illustrations, Colin Meloy and Nikki McClure pay tribute to Pete Seeger, a visionary who changed the world with song. Pete Seeger once sang that if he had a golden thread, he would use it to weave people from all over the world to one another. That golden thread, for Pete, was music.

Born into a family of traveling musicians, Pete picked up his first instrument at age seven. From then on, music was his life, whether he was playing banjo for soldiers during World War II, rallying civil rights activists and war protesters with songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “If I Had a Hammer,” or leading environmental efforts to clean up the Hudson River.

For decades, Pete Seeger’s messages of universal understanding and social and environmental justice inspired generations — and have left a lasting legacy.

Colin Meloy is the writer of the bestselling Wildwood Chronicles and the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists. The Golden Thread: A Song for Pete Seeger is his first picture book. He once joined Pete Seeger onstage, singing American folk standards at the Newport Folk Festival in 2011, and even now, he can barely believe it actually happened, it was so cool. He lives just outside Portland, Oregon, with his family.

Nikki McClure is an artist and writer who lives with her family in Olympia, Washington. She is the author-illustrator of a number of acclaimed picture books, including Waiting for High Tide, In, Collect Raindrops and The Great Chicken Escape, and she is the illustrator of All in a Day by Cynthia Rylant, May the Stars Drip Down by Jeremy Chatelain and The Golden Thread by Colin Meloy.

Author: Colin Meloy
Illustrator: Nikki McClure
Format: Hardcover, 48 pages
Publisher: Balzer + Bray (2018)
ISBN: 9780062368256