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Lyrics by Bob Dylan
Illustrated by Jon J. Muth
With CD of Dylan's original recording
Sterling, 2011
$17.95, ages 5 and up, 28 pages
In this sublime picture book adaptation, a paper airplane gliding across the sky becomes a breathtaking metaphor for the roles we all play in making a better world.
Award-winning Jon Muth meditates on Bob Dylan's remarkable 1963 protest song with sweeping illustrations steeped in symbolism, the most resonant being that of the toy plane.
Four children of differing skin color are taken by skiff across expanses of water and shown scenes that make them at turns reflective, sad, uncomfortable, and ultimately, ready to face up to a difficult truth:
That unjust things occur in the world and it is up to each of them to do something about them.
Passing overhead in almost every spread, a folded airplane symbolizes "the answer" in Dylan's refrain, "The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind," a figurative verse about opening one's heart to all of humanity.
The idea, it seems, is that if one's heart and senses are receptive, the answer to what to do about life's injustices can be heard or felt, though it's up to each of us to want to act on it.
"Just as each of the children in my illustrations has his or her own paper airplane, each of us knows what needs to be done in our worlds," Muth writes in an end note.
"Just as each of the children in my illustrations has his or her own paper airplane, each of us knows what needs to be done in our worlds," Muth writes in an end note.
Dylan himself in 1962 compared the "answer" in his song to paper, and one wonders if this played into Muth's choice of a paper airplane as his guiding metaphor.
"Just like a restless piece of paper it's got to come down some," Dylan wrote. "�But the only trouble is that no one picks up the answer when it comes down so not too many people get to see and know …and then it flies away. I still say that some of the biggest criminals are those that turn their
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