Books like Song and Dance Man
By Karen Ackerman
For the kid who loves hearing about grown-ups when they were young and can't quite picture Grandpa as anyone but Grandpa, this is the attic trunk full of proof. Warm, nostalgic, and a little bit sparkly with old-time stage charm.
An aspiring young musician hauls his double bass through busy city streets on the long walk home from school, weaving between crowds while music fills his heart the whole way.
A young boy visits his grandfather, but neither speaks the other's language, leaving them stuck in awkward silence — until they sit down together to draw, discovering a way to connect without words.
A girl from the Muscogee Creek Nation dreams of jingle dancing at the next powwow, but her dress has no jingles — so she turns to the women in her family and community to borrow theirs.
A girl who left her homeland as a baby must draw it for a school assignment, so she gathers memories from family and neighbors to imagine her way back to The Island.
A great-grandson wanders through his grandfather's topiary garden, where hedges shaped like a farmboy, a soldier, and a chickenpox-covered kid retell a whole lifetime one memory at a time.
Every night at six o'clock, a City Watch commander reads his little boy a farmyard picture book about cows and lambs, then starts reimagining it as a story about the city streets his son will actually grow up in.
On an Easter egg hunt through Grandmom's house, a girl discovers a box of hand-painted eggs in the attic and helps revive a family tradition: hanging them on a small tree.
A boy afraid to go to school rides his grandfather's 1952 Ford time machine back through Big Papa's own frightening moments, hearing the same lesson each time: that's called being brave.
Two children prepare for el Día de los Muertos, making sugar skulls and special bread, then scatter marigold petals to guide their ancestors home for a night of singing, dancing, and remembering.
An immigrant family stitches a quilt from old clothing to remember home in Russia, and for four generations that same quilt is passed from mother to daughter through weddings, Sabbaths, and births.
A young donkey finds a magic pebble that grants wishes, but a panicked wish during a scary encounter with a lion turns him into a rock — with no way to wish himself back.
A determined girl chases every trick her neighbors suggest to try to capture Brother Wind himself as her partner for the junior cakewalk jubilee, certain nothing else will do.
