Dazzlin' Dolly
The Songwriting, Hit-Singing, Guitar-Picking Dolly Parton
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
This inspirational and dazzlin’ story of Dolly Parton—noted singer, songwriter, and humanitarian—follows her rise to fame, from her beginnings in East Tennessee to performing to thousands at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.
Dolly is a little girl with a BIG voice. Music fills Dolly’s heart so plumb full she has to let it out! She’ll even sing to her cornhusk dolls or a pen full of pigs. She makes her own drum from a pot and her own guitar from a broken mandolin. But what Dolly dreams of is performing for a real audience—people who would hear her sing, and applaud!
And when she gets her big break at age ten, the soul-singin’ and big-dreamin’ Dolly discovers she’s scared to sing on stage in front of all those people. Will she summon up all of her courage and make it to the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville? Young readers will learn about Dolly’s early history, her endless creativity, and her plucky perseverance in this entertaining picture book that’s perfect for fans of all ages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Free verse peppered with Southern dialect and colloquialisms reads like a ballad of Dolly Parton's perseverance on her rise to stardom in this spirited picture book biography. As a child in a "newspaper-pasted-over-drafty-walls poor" family, Dolly Parton makes music with a homemade guitar and tin can microphone, but when her uncle books her on a live radio show, "big-dreamin' Dolly/ FROZE—/ barely able to breathe." Never one to back down, Dolly stands up to the "stage-fright bully" and fights for her dream of being a Nashville star. Slade's alliterative, rhythmic lines dynamically resonate with the book's subject. Focusing on Dolly, portrayed throughout wearing pops of red, Fotheringham's digitally rendered artwork leaves backgrounds sketchy and muted for contrast, an apt visual metaphor for the biography's "dazzlin' " subject. Back matter includes "More About Dolly."Ages 7–10.
