This is a story about a boy in Mississippi named Bo Willie and what happened when he lost his pet, Yellow Dog.

“Sometimes life is a mystery. Love is a mountain climb.
The blues grabbed me like a shaking chill.
I found my dog house - empty.”

“YELLOW DOG,”
I hollered, with tears welling
up my eyes. The rusty gate
swung back and forth.
My puppy love
….was gone.”

The boy searched everywhere. He went all through the neighborhood, asking if anyone had seen Yellow Dog. Someone told him he had seen Yellow Dog on Dockery Farm, where Muddy Waters once played the blues. But at Dockery Farm, all he saw was a faded sign directing any comers to Merigold. [Merigold is the site (now on the Mississippi Blues Trail) of the famous juke joint “Po Monkey’s Lounge,” said to have played an integral role in the development of the blues.] His Aunt Jessie drove him there. But they did not find Yellow Dog.

On the way home, they stopped at another institution on the Mississsippi Blues Trail, Hicks’ Tamales, where a man said he saw Yellow Dog leaving on a Greyhound bus, traveling with a band.

[As a side note, this New York Times article by someone who took the blues trail has an evocative account of Hicks’ tamales: “I ate six tamales at Hicks's Tamales, and found something very close to religion. Spicy hot, greasy, smooth and creamy, like eating pudding made in hell.”]

The boy figured Yellow Dog must be in the big city of Memphis, singing the blues on Beale Street.

The author concludes, somewhat unusually realistically for a children's book:

“What is the moral to this story? What is the lesson to this tale? Some dogs are very faithful. They will never leave your side. Some dogs ramble and run the road. They love you and then they’re gone.”

Gorgeous mixed-media art work by Chris Raschka was created from embroidery thread and fabric paint.

Back matter includes information on the Delta Blues - the birth of the blues - and on the landmarks mentioned in the book. The author writes: “As Bo Willie hits the road to find his pet, he visits seven sites that are important to American music and to what historians call the “Mississippi Blues Trail.” She explains what these places were and how they figured in Bo’s story.

Discussion: As an article on EarlyBlues.org explains, the blues starts with a sound that grew out of the call and response songs sung in the fields during slavery, but there is much more to it. Paul Oliver wrote in Blues Fell This Morning: The Meaning of the Blues (1960):

“The term ‘the blues’ refers to the ‘blue devils’, meaning melancholy and sadness . . . In lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood.”

But it’s not just about bad times, as the site quotes blues musician Taj Mahal as saying: “It’s about the healing spirit.”

Luther Brown and John Heggen from the Delta Center for Culture & Learning, point out:

“The Blues is about hope and despair, leaving and being left, wronging and being wronged, lynching and loving, tragedy and triumph, Saturday night and Sunday morning. It’s a way of taking trouble and making a song out of it, and helping to explain why the righteous suffer in the process, all in a completely vernacular and secular manner. The Blues makes a joyful noise out of lamentation and mourning. It is a way of making poetic and rhythmic sense out of life, and it grows directly out of the life of the Mississippi Delta.”

Most importantly, as Marlo Carter Kirkpatrick said in Mississippi Off the Beaten Path in 1999, “The Delta is not just a place, but a mindset.”

Evaluation: This book definitely conveys the blues mindset, evincing its salient aspects, chronicling both the hard times in life and the determination to deal with them - through compelling lyricism in the text of the story.

The intended reading audience of 4-8 may need explanations of the blues landmarks featured in the book, and may want to hear some blues as well as they read and listen. Fortunately there is plenty to choose from on Youtube, even including such rare classics as Robert Johnson performing “Crossroads,” referenced in the back matter. Readers can also check such sites as EarlyBlues.org to see pictures and get more background. A great deal of research on the blues is collected on the site, as well as links to other resources and of course music.

One hopes kids will be inspired to learn more about the irresistible rhythms and emotions of the blues and its rich history.

It should be noted that small children will enjoy this appealing book even without getting the historical music references. On a different level, it is just a fabulously illustrated story of a boy who lost his dog and wants him back, and finally accepts that he has moved on. ( )