Best Selling Books by John McCutcheon

Local historian Seth Bate tells the story of the Walnut Valley Festival with reflections from staff, emcees, performers, campers, and characters from throughout its history. The Festival was launched in 1972 when a guitar maker, a farmer, and a businessman built their own music festival from the ground up. It has made the small town of Winfield into an annual destination for acoustic musicians and music lovers from around the world and it has always been participatory, with the informal campsite pickin' as much a part of the event as the stage shows and instrumental contests. The Walnut Valley Festival has always been proud of its deep-rooted traditions, but most of all, it is a community celebration.

This moving book about peace, understanding, and unity is based on the real-life World War I event known as the Christmas Truce. It is cold and clear on Christmas Eve night in 1914. Suddenly, a strange sound pierces the darkness. Someone is singing a Christmas carol in German. Francis Tolliver and his fellow British soldiers are holed up in muddy trenches along the Western Front. Their enemies--German soldiers--lie in wait just across a field known as "No Man's Land." As the Germans' carol ends, Tolliver and the other British soldiers sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Soon carols are being sung back and forth. Then a figure emerges in the dark, carrying a small Christmas tree with lighted candles. The British and German soldiers slowly leave their trenches--and the war--behind to stand together in the open field. This haunting story is adapted by award-winning songwriter John McCutcheon from his song of the same name. Henri Sørensen's traditional, full-color oil paintings reinforce the emotional power and dignity of the story. Back matter provides more information about the historical event, and a CD featuring readings of the story and recordings of "Silent Night" and "Christmas in the Trenches" is included.

Young Drasko is happy working with his father in the Sarajevo market. Then war encroaches. Drasko must run the family flower stand alone. One morning, the bakery is bombed and twenty-two people are killed. The next day, a cellist walks to the bombsite and plays the most heartbreaking music Drasko can imagine. The cellist returns for twenty-two days, one day for each victim of the bombing. Inspired by the musician's response, Drasko finds a way to help make Sarajevo beautiful again. Inspired by real events of the Bosnian War, award-winning songwriter and storyteller John McCutcheon tells the uplifting story of the power of beauty in the face of violence and suffering. The story comes to life with the included CD in which cellist Vedran Smailović accompanies McCutcheon and performs the melody that he played in 1992 to honor those who died in the Sarajevo mortar blast.

John Tinney McCutcheon was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American newspaper political cartoonist who was known as the "Dean of American Cartoonists." Biography McCutcheon was born near South Raub, Tippecanoe County, Indiana to Captain John Barr McCutcheon and Clara Glick McCutcheon. He was the younger brother of novelist George Barr McCutcheon, writer of the Graustark books. His son, Shaw McCutcheon was an editorial cartoonist. He attended Purdue University, where he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity, and graduated in 1889 with a Bachelor of Science degree. At Purdue, he worked with typographer Bruce Rogers on the student newspaper and yearbook. On the Purdue campus, McCutcheon is memorialized in a coeducational dormitory, John T. McCutcheon Hall. The lobby displays an original of one of his drawings, a nearly life-size drawing of a young man. Awards McCutcheon received the Pulitzer Prize for Cartoons in 1932 for his Depression-era cartoon about a victim of bank failure. McCutcheon High School in his home county Tippecanoe is named in his honor. Travel Plaza 1, Mile Post 22 at Portage, Indiana of the Indiana Toll Road is named after John T. McCutcheon. McCutcheon died in Lake Forest, Illinois. The comic reprints from Escamilla Comics are reproduced from actual classic comics, and sometimes reflect the imperfection of books that are decades old.

Parents celebrate the day on which they adopted their child and continue to reassure the new addition to their family that it is wanted, loved, and very special.