Saturday, January 22, 2011

The Perfect Book

Peter and the Wolf


We introduced Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf 
recording to our son early, before he started rejecting 
most music that he does not make himself.
When he found the Raschka picture book in the library
in 2009, he immediately liked the playful spilling of the
words across the page and how Raschka used
nonsense words to represent the musical motifs
of the animals, a kind of instrumental onamatopoeia.
He found it again about two months ago 
and said "I found the perfect book."
Here is what my son wrote when I
asked him to describe the book.
"This book is called Peter and the Wolf.
It has people saying things in it.
I love the book because their saying is like singing.
The bird says things like "P-Peter."
The duck says like "Aeiou."
Peter says things like "Lovely, large, lovely", 
and "Perfect, most perfect."
The hunters say stuff like "We are the men." 
and "We caught the wolf.""

1 comment: