The Golden Thread

I heard there was a golden threadA shining, magic thingThat bounded up our little world—I heard Pete Seeger sing!Pete Seeger once sang that if he had a golden thread, he would use it to weave people from all over the world to one another. That golden thread, for Pete, was music.Born into a family of traveling musicians, Pete picked up his first instrument at age seven. From then on, music was his life, whether he was playing banjo for soldiers during World War II, rallying civil rights activists and war protesters with songs such as “We Shall Overcome,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” and “If I Had a Hammer,” or leading environmental efforts to clean up the Hudson River. For decades, Pete Seeger’s messages of universal understanding and social and environmental justice inspired generations—and have left a lasting legacy. With dazzling, lyrical verse in the folk revival style and stunning cut-paper illustrations that capture the spirit of the man and his times, Colin Meloy and Nikki McClure pay tribute to a visionary who changed the world with song.