Submitted by Connie Herbon, Iowa
Idea posted October 23, 2002
The book This Land Is Your Land, ill. by Kathy Jacobsen, is great for helping explain the song. It has previously been recommended multiple times on the MusicK8.com Mailing List, and I think someone said that it now comes with a recording of Woody Guthrie tunes.
ANYWAY, another good related picture book for this middler age (4th) is The Dust Bowl, by David Booth and Karen Reczuch, Kids Can Press, Ltd. The idea of the dust bowl is beyond so many of our farm kids in N.E. Iowa. This is a serious book and difficult for me, as a reader, to present to the classes, but it can be a great supplement if you have the right students and the time to do it justice. I would not recommend it for anyone below 3rd grade.