Posted on by TracyC

Grandma’s Records

Grandma’s Records by Eric Velasquez, 2001.

Every summer, a boy goes to visit his grandmother. He loves summers with his grandmother because she plays records from her record collection, teaches him to dance, and tells him stories about life in Puerto Rico, where she grew up.

She instills a love of music in her grandson and uses it to share memories with him about his grandfather and their home town. Sometimes, she lets him choose records from her collection to play, complimenting him on his choices. The boy likes art, and he makes sketches based on the album covers.

Then, his grandmother’s nephew comes to visit from Puerto Rico, along with his band. The boy is thrilled to meet them, and they give the boy and his grandmother tickets to see them perform in New York.

It’s a special occasion! They love the performance, and afterward, they visit with the band backstage. The boy and his grandmother continue sharing music with each other as the boy grows up, and as an adult, he continues to play it in his art studio.

At the end of the book, there are lyrics to one of the songs, In My Old San Juan (En Mi Viejo San Juan – YouTube video), both in English and Spanish. It’s a popular sentimental and nostalgic song for Puerto Ricans living abroad, as this YouTube video explains. The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies, including one in Spanish).

My Reaction

The story is really about the author/artist of the book and his own grandmother. At the end of the story, the picture he’s drawing in his studio is the cover of this book. It’s a touching tribute to his grandmother and the special memories he shared with her as they bonded over music! Parts of the story reflect on their Puerto Rican heritage, which is something they share and discuss with the grandmother’s nephew and the members of his band. I like how the author emphasizes that what makes the music so special are the memories associated with it. At first, the memories are his grandmother memories, but through his experiences with his grandmother, he builds memories of his own associated with the music they’ve shared. It is these memories as well as the music that helps to fuel his art.

Posted on by TracyC

I Can Fly

I Can Fly by Ruth Krauss, 1950.

This is a cute Little Golden Book about a little girl playing.

As she plays, she compares herself to various animals. When she’s on her swing, she feels like she’s flying like a bird, and when she swims, she feels like a fish.

The story is told in rhyme, and in the back of the book, there is actually music so you can sing the rhyme as a song.

There are different printings of this book, some with different illustrations. The different versions also have different words, and it looks like the newer one includes both a boy and a girl and doesn’t have the music for the song. One of the newer versions is available to borrow for free online through Internet Archive.

Posted on by TracyC

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert, 1989.

This is an alphabet book for young children, but it’s not like most alphabet books.  Most alphabet books try to tie letters of the alphabet to words that young children know, to emphasize the sounds that the letters make, like in A, My Name is Alice or the letter-themed tongue twisters in Animalia.

In Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the letters of the alphabet decide to climb to the top of a coconut tree.  (Why not?)  They go up the tree in alphabetical order.

But, by the time they reach the end of the alphabet, there are too many letters in the tree, and they all fall out.

The uppercase versions of the letters are the adults of the story, like parents and aunts and uncles, and they comfort the lowercase letters who fell out of the tree.

At the end of the book, the letter ‘a’ tries to convince the others to climb the tree again.

As I said, this book struck me as unusual for an alphabet book because it doesn’t try to tie any of the letters to associated words.  Mostly, it just emphasizes the order of the letters, first in the order that they go up the tree, and then in the order that they recover from falling out.

The story is told in rhyme, and the “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom” part is just sounds that fill out the story/rhyme, like it’s part of a song. At the end of the book, there’s a page with all of the letters of the alphabet, both upper and lowercase.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.