With his ‘magic dragon,’ Yarrow brings lessons of respect to kids

By Andrea Waxman
of The Chronicle staff

To the baby boomer generations, the Peter Yarrow/Lenny Lipton song, “Puff the Magic Dragon,” is associated with the days of the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War protests and hippie love.

But “Puff,” which was first recorded on Peter, Paul and Mary’s second album, “Moving,” in 1963, has just been reincarnated for a much younger audience.

Released this month by Sterling Publishing, the new version of “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the first of several planned publications with Yarrow, targets children from age 3 to 7. It features a high quality picture book illustrating the song’s lyrics and a compact disc recording of Peter Yarrow and his daughter Bethany Yarrow singing to the accompaniment of her musical collaborator, cellist Rufus Cappadocia.

In addition to vocal and instrumental versions of “Puff,” the CD includes “Froggie Went A Courtin’” and “The Blue Tail Fly,” two traditional folk songs, with new words and music by the Yarrows and Cappadocia.

Yarrow will present his new publication and musical version of Puff at the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop, 10976 N. Port Washington Rd., Mequon, on Saturday, Aug. 25 at 2 p.m.

Yarrow, 69, speaking from New York City where he lives, told The Chronicle recently that he did not bring this book and CD of Puff out earlier because he has just recently gained a new sense of “linkage” — between past and present, and between the generations.

From his current perspective, working with his 36-year-old daughter, who is a new mother, Yarrow spoke of the traditions of American folk music and of his desire to pass them on to younger generations.

“When Peter, Paul and Mary sang ‘Puff,’ we didn’t do it like Pete Seeger would have done it. We reinterpreted it and we became the bridge to kids listening to Peter, Paul and Mary.”

Likewise the new CD “has a groove that kids now really relate to,” Yarrow said. Noting that younger Americans have grown up listening to world, groove and other kinds of music. Yarrow said that the new “Puff’s” contemporary sensibility came from Bethany and Rufus. He let their point of view guide him, he said.

The cloth book with a gold-rimmed illustration inset in its cover, and an embossed jacket with foil touches, features colorful, but soft, whimsical paintings by French artist Eric Puybaret.

The sweet-faced, green striped dragon frolics over the blue, green and sand-colored pages with his playmate Jackie Paper “in a land called Honalee.” Together they travel the oceans and bask in the esteem of “noble kings and princes” as well as pirates, until the day that “Jackie came no more.”

And in a visual surprise ending, Puybaret turns the lyrics’ sad ending into a joyful one.

Teaching respect

This gentle world of fantasy and folksy sing-along songs is strongly connected to what Yarrow treats as his most important work.

Embodied in Operation Respect, an organization Yarrow founded in 1999, that work is also closely connected to his Jewish identity, he said.

According to his organization’s mission statement, its goal is “to assure each child and youth a respectful, safe and compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence.”

And to Yarrow, who said that Operation Respect is “pro-active, not just anti-bullying,” the connection between small cruelties and much larger ones, like the Holocaust, is important.

“In the [Anti-Defamation League’s] ‘Pyramid of Hate,’ Yarrow explained, “they talk about the development from bullying to hate crimes.” And since it is extremely difficult “to get adults to give up their patterns of behavior and their cultural narrative of bias and hate,” Yarrow said, he has focused his efforts on reaching children and youth.

Operation Respect works mainly through schools, disseminating educational materials designed to establish a climate that reduces the emotional and physical cruelty some children inflict upon each other through ridicule, bullying and in extreme cases, violence. Operation Respect is now in 22,000 public and Jewish schools Yarrow said.
One such program, called “Don’t Laugh at Me,” was developed for three different settings, one for grades 2-5, another for grades 6-8 and a third for summer camps and after-school programs.

Some 145,000 copies of the curriculum have been distributed to educators, free of charge, thanks to the McGraw-Hill Companies. And the organization also offers assembly programs and professional development workshops designed to provide educators with the tools for effective implementation.

Yarrow’s connection to education (his mother was a teacher) and his life-long involvement in social activism have led him to this work. And while he says he is not an observant Jew, he believes his work with Operation Respect expresses his essential Jewishness.

Noting that he first came to appreciate his Jewish identity at a Passover rally in 1983, Yarrow remarked on the fact that Jews have always been involved in seeking justice.

He also sees a connection between his work and folk music.
“There is a connection between building community, and the mitzvah corps and summer camps. [Those kinds of groups] have been singing folk music and building community for years.”

Yarrow sold over 100 volumes of “Puff” at the Conference for Alternatives in Jewish Education in St. Louis last week and said that half a million volumes have been ordered from the publisher.

He plans to publish at least two more books and CDs with Sterling Publishing, featuring “Day is Done” and “Light One Candle,” each including three other songs. In addition, they will create four books of 12 songs of folk music, he said.

“That will be a way to reach the next generation in the same way that college students were reached by earlier folk music,” Yarrow said.

“My premise is that kids need this kind of sensibility in their lives, that they need music that will be shared. Besides being something that has charm and warmth, this music has a spirit of gentleness and caring and respect and it also celebrates the legacy of folk music and community.”