LIVING IN THE PRESENT WITH JOHN PRINE
by Covid\u002D19. He was 73. Piazza repurposed the materials he had gathered to produce this moving work. Equal parts profile, oral history, and on\u002Dthe\u002Droad adventure, the book recounts the artist’s working\u002Dclass background in suburban Chicago, his family connection to rural Kentucky, his early success with Atlantic Records, and the decision to co\u002Dfound the label Oh Boy Records. Often writing in the first person and present tense, Piazza recounts his time with Prine, including a spontaneous road trip from Nashville to Sarasota, Florida, in a cherry\u002Dred 1977 Coupe de Ville. Piazza also reviews Prine’s body of work, its broad influence, and his unassuming humanity. Comparing Prine to Bob Dylan, Piazza notes, “You don’t want to be him, you just want to hang out with him.” Along the way, the author gathers insights from Prine’s peers, friends, and family. One band member, for example, notes that Prine’s keen emotional intelligence easily overcame his limitations as a musician and singer. A two\u002Dtime cancer survivor, Prine was already in poor health when Piazza befriended him, but the artist’s good humor and low\u002Dkey grace shine through on every page."
Based on 62 Goodreads ratings
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Musician John Prine gets the picture-book biography treatment here, tracing his path from mail carrier to celebrated singer-songwriter while centering the idea that ran through his own work: paying a...
Our Review
Musician John Prine gets the picture-book biography treatment here, tracing his path from mail carrier to celebrated singer-songwriter while centering the idea that ran through his own work: paying attention to ordinary, easily-missed moments. The text and illustrations lean into that same unhurried noticing rather than racing through a standard rise-to-fame arc, so the book reads more like an invitation to slow down than a list of career milestones. It's currently rated 4.66 across 62 Goodreads ratings.
The real subject here is mindfulness dressed up as a music biography, gratitude, presence, the value of noticing small things, translated into language a child can actually hold onto, with Prine's own life as the concrete example rather than an abstract lesson. A kid doesn't need to know Prine's music going in, the book does the work of introducing both the man and the way of seeing the world that shaped his songs. It's a natural pick for a family conversation about slowing down, and a gentle way to hand a new generation an artist they might not otherwise encounter for years.
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