With their love of folk music and, in particular, their current attachment to Bruce Springsteen’s “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” (a gift from my Bruce loving, musician father, who knows that anything even remotely involving Pete Seeger is bound to be a hit with my boys), it’s no wonder that my kids have taken an interest in John Henry.

It struck me as being very appropriate material for going into second grade with the saints and hero blocks. The somewhat supernatural traits seem to be the key here. These blocks focus not just on good people, but on other worldly beings. Seems to me that John Henry could easy hold a spot there.

Ah, but while both boys enjoy the tale, the child who’s heart it spoke to is my kindergartner…

On our last trip to the library, much to my delight, I came across Julius Lester’s brilliant children’s version of this tale and sweet Elijah-Bug was sold at once.

He has quite literally been devoting full mornings to pulverizing rocks, leaving nothing more then dust.

Make-up and costumes make this play all the more exciting.

I’ve already requested that the song be added to our repertoire, for when our family chorus starts up again in the fall. If anyone else has any other suggestions for working working with this particular folk tale, I would love to hear them!

Edited to add: The day after I posted this, I received my copy of the Christopherus Unit Studies guide to Saints and Heroes by Donna Simmons. I was thrilled when I stopped John Henry mentioned early on in the book (I was hoping for that thing). Later in the book she goes on to say “the only reason I didn’t include this wonderful American folk hero is because I want everyone to get Julius Lester’s fantastic book on him (illustrated by Jerry Pinkey)! There is no way I could do as good a job as this book-” I had to laugh! Apparently, Donna and I see eye to eye on this one! By the way, while I haven’t gotten all the way through “Saints and Heroes” yet, it’s looking wonderful so far!