I was looking recently for a birthday gift for a good friend of mine who happens to be one of the few people I know who loves John Denver as much as I do. Although we met on the forum of Art Garfunkel’s website, I decided I wanted to find an unusual and inspirational sort of John Denver-related present for her. A trip to Amazon revealed a series of children’s books that are adaptations of John Denver songs. Evidently there are three in the series, each beautifully illustrated by Christopher Canyon. I opted to send her Sunshine on My Shoulders and Take Me Home, Country Roads, both songs with which I am very familiar and both of which conveyed just the kind of sentiments I was looking for. The third, Ancient Rhymes: A Dolphin Lullaby, was a wild card. I’d never heard of the song before, and the content of the book seemed very specific, chronicling the birth of a dolphin, and didn’t have any strong applicability to my friend. So I passed on it, but I hunted it down at a local library and checked it out.

It’s an odd choice in some respects because it lacks the iconic status of the other two. I’m a huge Denver fan and it was completely unfamiliar to me. But it’s a song that tells a story, one particularly appropriate to children, and it is extremely grounded in the natural world, which makes it a good match for Dawn Publications, a company devoted to “sharing nature with children.” The inside flap reveals that the simple yet mystical tale of a dolphin’s birth was inspired by an encounter he and his wife Cassie had with a dolphin while she was seven months pregnant. Clearly his passion for the joyful marine mammals went further back than that, though. Calypso is the best example I can furnish of John Denver’s love affair with the sea, but while that is exuberant, this is mellow, with vocals displaying a tender storyteller’s touch.

The first page we see is a star-studded blue canvas with a circle cut out in the middle, through which we can see the fin of a dolphin as it raises a splash in the ocean. Written around the circle is the verse that serves as an introduction to each of these books: “Music makes pictures and often tells stories, all of it magic and all of it true. And all of the pictures and all of the stories, and all of the magic, the music is you.” The accompanying CD contains not only the sedate title song but also this short tune, which runs roughly a minute and a half and precedes the longer song. I’m not a big fan of the arrangement, which features a woman harmonizing in rather distracting manner, lending the short song a chaotic feel. I guess this is to demonstrate how each of us has a different song to sing. It’s a nice idea but it doesn’t come across quite as well as it could.

Each page in the story itself is framed with the same midnight-blue of that starry sky, while the illustrations are awash in lighter shades, sky and cerulean. Most of the pictures depict underwater scenes replete with coral and tropical fish and dolphins gliding through aquatic deeps just barely touched by sunlight. The book begins before the dolphin’s birth then shows the newborn exploring its world, turning flips as it mingles with the fish and leaping into the air with the choppy waves below and the hazy sun forming a dramatic backdrop. The paintings are evocative and realistic-looking with soothing hues in each landscape and personality in each creature. Predictably, the dolphins always appear to be smiling, but there is particular exhilaration in the depiction of the youngster opening its mouth wide to sing the songs of its species.

While there is some element of science to Denver’s descriptions and Canyon’s illustrations, the work is as much fanciful as factual. We have a page in which the as-yet unborn dolphin dreams of the world awaiting it and another intimating that the infant makes a mighty leap above the waves within moments of its birth. Additionally, Denver, in a departure from the typical seamless flow of his songs, commits the faux pas of rearranging words in order to facilitate rhythm and rhyme. This practice, used in such lines as “giving hope to life as all we must, and teach us how their grace to share” creates a clunkiness unwelcome in a book so focused on grace and fluidity. Curiously, this song came near the end of Denver’s career, at which point you would think his songwriting skills would be at their peak, especially considering the untimeliness of his death. I seem to recall his skills taking a bit of a dive around that time, though; I know he had a rough patch and that he was just bouncing back from it when his life was cut short.

Out of the three books in the series, then, I think this is easily the weakest. The song is not as good as the other two, and the illustrations, while lovely, are not as distinctive - a point on which I will expand when I review the other two. However, this is still the product of great care, both on the part of Denver and the artist who was so inspired by him. Given Denver’s wholehearted commitment to children around the world, I’m sure he would be pleased at the tribute Canyon has paid him in turning his songs into magnificent picture books. As Vince Gill writes on the inside flap, "It just makes sense - John Denver and kids!" Hopefully the children reading these books will be inspired to take a look around them at the glory of the natural world. They may also be attracted to Denver’s heartfelt vocal style and seek out more of his music. For those children who are especially musically inclined, there is also a copy of the sheet music in the back of the book. Although this did not inspire me quite as much as the other offerings, all three books in the John Denver and Kids book series are worthy efforts, and I truly hope that Canyon plans more installments soon.

Higher Ground
John Denver's Greatest Hits
A Christmas Together (John Denver and the Muppets)
Rocky Mountain Christmas
A Rocky Mountain Holiday (John Denver and the Muppets) - DVD
The Wildlife Concert
The Wildlife Concert - DVD

Recommended: Yes