Abiyoyo

Once upon a time there was a boy. This boy heard a story about a giant who threatens a town, and who gets defeated by a man and his son. The story was titled "Abiyoyo." His mama then found a YouTube clip of the book's author, none other than the estimable Pete Seeger, performing Abiyoyo on Reading Rainbow way back sometime in the 1980's (a show that his daddy had most likely watched when it first ran live). For the next few months things got a little crazy.

Well, it should be pretty transparent who the boy is. Andres has been on an Abiyoyo kick for the better part of 2010. Like many habits (addictions?) it started innocuously, spread quickly, and then started to envelop all aspects of life. Only now are we seemingly on the tail end of this experience, so it feels like a good time to tell the story.

To tell the truth, I cannot remember the first time Andres read Abiyoyo. I'm not even sure either Natalia or I read it to him--it is entirely possible that he heard the story at Betty's house and then told us about it later. I don't know. What I do know is that Andres developed a liking for this story, and this liking turned serious when he first saw the old Reading Rainbow episode.

Now the only thing kids love more than a new book is hearing that new book read a bunch of times in a row. There's nothing abnormal about that. Except Andres never tired of hearing Abiyoyo read aloud. He loved hearing it at Betty's, and when he came home at the end of the day, he would ask to watch the Abiyoyo clip again and again and again. This pattern repeated itself day after day, week after week for a while: read Abiyoyo at Betty's, watch the videos at home. He never grew weary of it. (Though he did, gradually, become less afraid of some parts of the story--the first few weeks he watched the clip online, he would back away from the computer--and sometimes even hide--when the giant made his first appearance.)

A couple months passed and we happened to be at New England Book Fair when I found it--not only did they have Abiyoyo in stock (up until now, we did not have a hard copy of the book) but they also had the sequel to the story, titled "Abiyoyo Returns." Well this was a gold mine. We fed the addiction and bought both books--but not before I read both of them twice to Andres in the bookstore. He could not wait until we got home to dive into them!

Abiyoyo became a pre-bedtime staple. We read it every night, sometimes more than once, and definitely to the exclusion of many other books. It was as much as part of the bedtime ritual as brushing teeth and kissing Celia goodnight.

Now a funny thing started to happen: Andres would pretend he was having conversations with Pete Seeger over the phone.

Me: "Who are you talking to?"
Andres: "My friend Pete."
Me: "Oh. What are you talking about?"
Andres: "We're just talking about a giant named Abiyoyo."

Soon he had listened to the story so many times that he began memorizing parts of it. Here he is watching the Reading Rainbow clip and following along in his book:



Short performances followed as well. Since his friend Pete had a guitar in the video, Andres required one as well...so Natalia made him one out of a Boston Celtics foam finger and a large piece of Pottery Barn fabric. He began to take his guitar everywhere.

Finally he had practiced enough that he would treat us to impromptu recitals of the entire story--from start to finish! Only a couple good videos of this exist...here is one:



(He definitely acts more goofy in front of the camera, and his words are not always easy to interpret--but he has most of the story down pat.)

I find these performances amazing because Andres has never actually read the book--he has heard the story many times, and it has now been read to him many times, but he can't read...so everything that he is reciting he has memorized from hearing the story spoken aloud. That seems like a pretty impressive achievement for someone not quite 3 and a half years old.

A few weeks after the full performances started, he began to lose interest in the initial Reading Rainbow video. He found a couple other renditions of Abiyoyo that he liked (he titled one of them "New Abiyoyo) but he never really developed the fervor for those that he did for the original one. And while he enjoys having "Abiyoyo Returns" read aloud to him, he is not crazy about that book like he was about its precursor. He went through a brief phase where he enjoyed acting out the story as if he was Abiyoyo--the highlight of this phase was the face he made when pretending he was the giant. But even that was pretty short-lived. In fact, I think it's now been a few weeks since we've read either of the books or even seen one of the Abiyoyo movies. He seems to be moving on.

I am both happy and sad about this. Sad because it was really fun to see him so engaged in a story, and because I was always wondering what he was going to do next--the phone calls to Pete really threw me for a loop. But I'm also happy because I think he's had his fun with this story and is now finding other things that he is interested in.

I do hope he treats us to a couple more recitals of Abiyoyo though before he forgets the story. It's a good one, and he's a good storyteller. Just like his friend Pete.