Woody Guthrie, Poet of the People
by Bonnie Christensen

Released by Alfred Knopf for Young Readers, "Poet of the People" celebrates the life and times and the spirit of an American original --the great folk musician Woody Guthrie.

His most famous song, "This Land is Your Land," is sung by school children today nearly as often as our national anthem. And his songs expressing the thoughts and feelings of ordinary Americans during the Great Depression and the 1940's are still heard whenever people gather to sing out for peace or the environment or justice.

With a brief, lyrical text and powerful illustrations, Bonnie Christensen has created a stunning picture book that is at once a biography for Woody's youngest fans and a moving ode for folksingers of all ages.

Bonnie Christensen is a fine artist and printmaker who teaches at St. Michael's College in Vermont and in the summer teaches at Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy.  After graduating from the University of Vermont as a theater and communications major, she worked for the Screen Actors Guild in New York City where she had frequent opportunities to join in singing Woody Guthrie's songs at the Guild's rallies and on their picket lines.  "I was never a professional folksinger but always a protester," she says.

She has illustrated "The Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck for the Folio Society in London and several children's books, including "Moon Over Tennessee: A Boy's Civil War Journal" by Craig Crist-Evans and "Breaking Into Print" by Stephen Krensky.  In Woody Guthrie: Poet of the People," her mixed-media woodcut-like illustrations evoke the era during which Guthrie lived.

Ms. Christensen lives in Colchester, Vermont with her daughter Emily.