Bob Dylan, spellbinding songwriter

School Library Journal

Gr 4-8 This short, easy-to-read sketch provides an accurate skeleton of Dylan's shrouded life and influential music career (although calling Bob Dylan ``the most important writer of popular songs of the past three decades'' is debatable). Aaseng leads readers quickly through Dylan's uneventful middle class childhood to his adolescent awakening to the murmurs of social change in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He shows how Dylan as a folk musician and songwriter-poet was helped by Joan Baez and Peter, Paul, and Mary and how he has progressed to folk rock, religious soft rock, western music, and finally returned to his folk music roots. Aaseng depicts Dylan as a man who has refused to cater to his fans and the mediaand through all the changes in his personal and musical life, has maintained a social awareness. Black-and-white photos offer glimpses of Dylan at different points of his career, and a helpful ``timeline'' of his life appears at the end of the book, although there is no index. Many questions remain about Dylan's heavily guarded private life, but this book will whet young readers' appetites. Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San Diego