Have you seen the little orange
boxes in the children’s reading room? These are called Playaways, a nifty
system for listening to audiobooks that doesn’t require special equipment other
than headphones and a battery. Being old enough to have enjoyed playing little
records that came with Read Aloud books, I wanted to try out this technology
and see how it compared. I found it to be super simple to use; I put in the
battery and plugged in my headphones and pushed play and it was easy as that.
The bookpack I chose,
Chato’s
Kitchen and Other Stories From the Hispanic Tradition includes several stories, (with books as well as the player), two
about a cat named Chato and another about Mexican pottery. In the jewel of the
set, Chato’s Kitchen, Cheech Marin voices the characters wonderfully, and the
background music is a fun match for the voices and illustrations. I don’t think
I would have enjoyed the story so much without the added flavor combination of
Marin’s voicing and the snippets of Chicano rock music.
The story itself was fun:
Low-riding Chato is a cat from East LA. And like many cats, he thinks a dinner
“with” the local family of rodents could be the feast of his dreams. He invites
his friend, Novio Boy, to help him in the kitchen where they are whipping up
some Chicano dishes that will make your mouth water: Tamales, frijoles,
churros, and more . . . it’s a feast for sure. The music will make you want to
dance along with Chato and Novio Boy as they cook.
Recognized as one of the best 100
books in the last 100 years by New York Public Library in 2014, Chato’s Kitchen
is a fun take on the “mice pull one over on the cat who invited them to dinner
genre.” And the play-away book version is extra special.
The other stories included in the
set were Chato and the Party Animals (Chato’s friend, Novio Boy, has never had
a birthday party. So Chato decides to throw him one – a “pachanga” – and
everyone is invited.) and The Pot that Juan Built: (Juan Quezada, one of
Mexico’s most famous potters, used his creative gifts to transform his
impoverished village into a thriving artists’ community. The book includes a
rhyming story and background on Juan Quezada).
This bookpack of three books and a
player was thoroughly enjoyable and Cheech Marin did a wonderful job of voicing
all the different characters, and, as I mentioned before, the background music
made me want to get up dance. If you haven’t tried a Playaway book, and you (or
your kids) like stories about cats, I’d highly recommend giving it a go!
Recommended
by
Carrie
K.
Bennett Martin Public Library
Have you read or listened to this one? What
did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the
Staff
Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that
page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog
individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the
reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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