“MY GRANDMOTHER IS A SINGING YAYA”

With alternating admiration and embarrassment, young Lulu presents her “Yaya”—Greek for “Grandma”—a former opera singer given to trilling out exuberantly at every opportunity. Palmisciano (Hannah and the Whistling Teakettle, 2000, etc.) gives Lulu’s Yaya loud clothes, a pink bicycle, a shock of tightly curled, glossy black hair, and a big personality. The action climaxes at a Grandparents’ Day picnic, where, amidst scenes of gray-haired elders of both sexes engaged in such typical activities as flirting and changing a diaper, Lulu struggles to keep Yaya quiet, fails utterly, and at last just joyfully joins in. The title becomes Lulu’s song whenever she’s in the mood to let go. Almost as free with her savory lemon soup and mouthwatering baklava as she is with a song, Yaya joins a chorus of memorable picture story grandmas, from Tomie DePaola’s Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs (1973, 1998) to Arthur Dorros’s Abuela (1991). (Picture book. 6-8)