Max said yes!

A Woodstock tale for kids

By FRITZ MAYER

LOS ANGELES, CA — With the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock concert this summer, there are bound to be new ways to commemorate the historic, tie-dyed event. One that is set to blossom is the first children’s book about the concert.

The book is titled “Max Said Yes!,” and was written by Abigail Yasgur, a cousin of Max Yasgur, the man who allowed the concert to take place on his farm in Bethel, NY. Abigail, who is the director of the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles, wrote the book with her husband, Joseph Lipner, a writer and lawyer.

The couple said the book explains that when Max agreed to host the concert, he was taking a bit of a chance because other farmers had already turned it down. As the language of the book reports, one farmer said, “There’s no way … I’d let hippies camp out in my hay.”

Abigail recited the next lines of the book during a phone interview from her kitchen. She read, “There was one farmer who did not think the same … and Max Yasgur was his name. He sold milk and cheese … and he liked kids with big ideas like these.

“And on the next page,” said Abigail, “there’s a huge picture of Max and a dialogue bubble with a big word ‘yes.’”

Joseph joined the interview, saying, “There was one farmer who agreed to do it, but backed out because there was a lot of opposition.”

Abigail said the story is told in a way that gives children the idea that “where there’s a dream involved, you just keep moving forward until you get the right partner, and Max was definitely the right partner.”

Abigail said parents wonder how a children’s book about the festival, which is so tied up with sex and drugs, could be created.

She answered the question saying, “We created a book that’s evocative of the times?peace, love and incense fills the air?that takes the risqué material out so that you could start a conversation about a different time, a different era, something that was pivotal in music history and the people’s history in the United States.”

Lipner said kids love the pictures and the rhymes in the book. He added, “They have some questions; for instance, there’s a reference to the Age of Aquarius and they ask ‘what’s that,’ but they really get the central point of the story, which is about Max welcoming hundreds of thousands of people onto his land, which was a pretty unpopular thing to do, but making this moment in history possible. It was an important lesson about openness, welcoming strangers to your home and the value of hope.”

And Richie Havens liked it too. “It’s a beautiful book. It lets the light of Woodstock shine on a new generation,” he said.

The book is due to be published in May; go to www.maxsaidyes.com to find out more.