Greetings from Hobblebush Books
Announcing Publication of: Jefferson’s Dream by John Perrault
KEEPING THE DECLARATION ALIVE AND WELL: EXPLORING EIGHT GREAT AMERICANS IN WORD AND SONG--BOOK & CD FOR TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND THE GENERAL READER:
A Unique perspective on the Declaration of Independence with photos, text,
ballad lyrics, music and recorded songs on eight great Americans who ploughed Jefferson’s field: Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Tubman, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Henry David Thoreau, Ida B. Wells, and
Eleanor Roosevelt.
(Please visit http://www.hobblebush.com/ to order the book & CD.)
For Immediate Release:
Educators have been searching for tools to make the American story “stick” in the minds of their students. Welcome an unusual book and CD combination: John Perrault’s Jefferson’s Dream from Hobblebush Books. In an integrated arts approach to history and ideas, John Perrault, a balladeer, lawyer, teacher and poet, focuses history through the lens of song. Presenting eight major figures who risked everything to bring the Declaration’s values to fruition, Jefferson’s Dream recounts their stories with riveting original ballads.
The CD and text make history live in the head and the heart, connecting the reader viscerally as well as cognitively with American ideals. Music, lyrics and text merge to reveal the Declaration’s relation to the Revolution, Abolitionism, Women’s Rights, the Civil War, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
John Perrault is the author of two poetry collections: The Ballad of Louis Wagner and other New England Stories in Verse (Peter Randall Publisher), and Here Comes The Old Man Now (Oyster River Press). He was Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH 2003-2005. You can learn more about John at www.johnperrault.com.
" John Perrault has a great passion for history and a wonderful insight into the American experience. These stories and songs reflect an outstanding dedication to that passion.”
--Bill Staines
JEFFERSON’S DREAM ~ THE BALLAD OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
ISBN 978-0-9801672-7-6 / 96 pp, Paper with French Fold flaps / $16.95 for book and CD (add $3 for S&H plus $1 ea. add. BK) Hobblebush Books, 17-A Old Milford Road, Brookline, NH 03033 Ph/Fax: (603) 672-4317 hobblebush@charter.net
To order Jefferson's Dream on line, click here: http://www.hobblebush.com/pages/Bookstore.html
Scroll 16 books down on the right--there it is with the blue cover!
(Book Stores and Libraries may order from SPD: www.spdbooks.org -- Schools/Ed., Cultural, Historic Organizations—contact Pub. for bulk orders)
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Here Comes the Old Man Now
Poems by John Perrault
Publisher: Oyster River Press, Durham , NH
Paper, $15.00 (includes shipping and handling)
© John Perrault, 2005
What People are saying about Here Comes the Old Man Now
For those who've heard John Perrault as a singer/songwriter, his lyrics sound like poems. For those who've known him as a poet, his poems sing. Perrault brings a range of quirky lyric autobiography of a place and time. He writes of love and pleasure; of loss and death and hope: in the privacy of rooms; in our own country's public squares and fields and woods; in the churchyards and streets and cafés of foreign countries. His poems are heart-felt, unsentimental; tender, muscular. They are political and deeply personal. To read these poems is to realize that someone is trying to understand. In these times, that's a rare comfort
--Marie Harris
John Perrault's book arrived on the first really Arctic day of the winter, and I read it at one sitting in a warm corner. John is a songbird/troubadour, with news from all over. His lyrical delineations of home and hearth and family form the base from which he then departs-- whether to stormy Maine coasts, to the Paris of heritage, to the Argentina of the disappeared, to sunny isles or the scared and measuring solitudes of great wildernesses, all his dispatches resound against the base: home, hearth, and the family around us and before and after us. The book is such an affirmation of what I believe and what I cherish and foster, I shall need multiple copies. It has to be kept safe at hand, and it has to be widely shared.
--Jean Pedrick
Here Comes the Old Man Now begins with an epigraph from Bernart de Ventadorn that says in part: "It is worthless to write a line if the song proceed not from the heart." John Perrault's short, mostly lyrical poems are, indeed, "poems from the heart." These small poems cover a wide territory: poems of family, of aging, of relationships, poems of war, of art, disaster, and grief. The landscapes range from the North Country to Paris, Sanibel, Grenada, across the world. They are sad poems, humorous poems and all the states of emotion in-between. What holds them together in this fine book is the delicacy and craft with which they were made, the search for consolations that may not even be possible, and the spirit inside them that arrows at us straight from the heart. This book is a delight, hold it close, savor it. I think you will want to read it again and again.
--Patricia Fargnoli
To See More Reviews, Click on "Reviews" Above
The Ballad of Louis Wagner and other New England Stories in Verse
Ten ballads, five songs, fifteen poems by John Perrault with photographs by Peter Randall. Includes CD of the ballads and songs by John Perrault. Text © John Perrault., 2003.
Publisher: Peter Randall Publisher, Portsmouth NH
Cloth, $25.00 (includes shipping and handling)
"John Perrault's ballads are a combination of poetry and grit."
--Marie Harris, Your Sun, Manny; Weasel in the Turkey Pen; Raw Honey
"John's 'Ballad of Louis Wagner' is the best story song I've ever heard."
--Ernest Hebert, The Dogs of March; Whisper My Name; The Old American
"In his ballads John Perrault reveals an acuity about human nature and the reconciling wisdom that opens it up to others with jolts of crusty lascivious humor that only a true-bred Easterner can bring off. And with the enclosed CD you learn Perrault sings as "bad" as Dylan."
--Larry Woiwode, Beyond the Bedroom Wall; Indian Affairs; What I Think I Did
Hear John's Interview with John Walters on "The Front Porch" on NH Public Radio at: www.nhpr.org/view_archives/1/2004/4/ and click on "The Barrister Balladeer"
To order by mail, please e-mail John--rockweedatcomcastdotnet--for price information and shipping orders.