Compact
Disc Review
Heck
no, we didn’t bury my mother!
and other
family stories as told by Lona Bartlett
Available
directly from Lona Bartlett by emailing lona@lonabartlett.com .
website:
www.lonabartlett.com
$15.00, plus $3.00 shipping and handling.
Reviewed By
Linda Goodman
This collection of charming stories
delightfully told is an impressive sampler of the personal stories, poetry,
folktales, and tall tales in Lona Bartlett’s repertoire.
The Dunderdeck Machine introduces
us to Lona’s father (a largely self-educated poet with a sharp wit and a love
of words) and his favorite poem. Surely Lona has other stories about this
endearing man and I cannot wait to hear them.
The
album’s title story, Heck no, we didn’t bury my
mother!, is a lesson on what NOT to share if you were raised in an
“undocumented religion,” especially if you want to be on your church’s prayer
team. The dialog in this story is hilarious.
Bartlett
grew up in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, where she heard the same
folktales that those of us who grew up in the Southern Appalachians Mountains
enjoyed. Her rendition of Jack and the
Bull is one of them, and she tells it with skill, daring, and a contagious
sense of wonder. In this story, Jack is the target of an old woman’s grudge.
Fortunately, Jack is aided by an enchanted bull who knows exactly how to deal
with Jack’s problems. Of course, Jack ends up rich and returns to his mother to
live happily ever after, or at least until his next adventure
In The Muffler Pipe, about Joel, Bartlett’s
only brother and the baby of the family, an experiment with a muffler pipe
leads to chaos on the family farm. The CD ends with Anansi and the Tiger, a pourquoi tale from Africa that finds Anansi
competing with a much larger adversary for the hand of a princess. Anansi may
be much smaller than Tiger, but Anansi is a trickster. What antics will he pull
to make the princess choose him?
Bartlett
is of mixed heritage and the stories on this CD celebrate her family’s internal
diversity. She creatively uses unique character voices to good effect.
Elementary school children, as well as older children and adults, will enjoy
this CD.
