by Moe Zilla

Created on: March 10, 2010

A banjo for bluegrass music gets packed up in granny's "trusty old case." She straps on her thousand-mile shoes, and prepares for an adventurous trip to serenade her new baby grandson. Owen's granny has to cross a river, a mountain, and a desert to reach him. But birds perch on Owen's window sill to tell him she's on her way.

There's a picture of the real baby Owen printed on the book's jacket, and it tells us that author Jaqueline Briggs Martin had to travel across the country to see her new grandbaby. (Martin lives in Iowa, and sets out to see her grandchildren "as often as possible.") Owen's grandmother has won a Caldecott Medal for her book "Snowflake Bentley", but this is the first book that she's written together with her daughter - Owen's mother - Sarah Busse (a poet who lives in Wisconsin).

In their story, Granny's got a crooked old walking stick, but she faces a massive muddy river which has flooded over her path. ("The river was fast. The river was deep...") But when she thinks of her grandson, her heart is set on continuing the journey. So she uses the banjo case as a raft - and calms the river by singing it a song about her grandbaby.

"The river slowed and listened."

It's a story about just how much the grandmother loves her grandson - and how excited she is to share things.

The authors dedicated the book "To grannies everywhere, especially to Ginny Lyon - one of the best of them. And to grandbabies everywhere., with hopes they'll have many wiggyly, jiggly, all-around giggly good times." It's a phrase whicih repeats through the stories granny's heard about baby Owen - and the stories she tell about him.
At the front of the book there's sheet music for a sweet melody called "Owen's Song."  And even its lyrics describe a baby that "jigs and wiggles top to toe when a banjo pulls a tune down from the sky..."

Granny pulls a red balloon from her banjo case, which carries her over a tall mountain. And later she pulls a long nightgown from her banjo case, which becomes a parachute that lets her ride the wind across a desert. But each time she gets some help from the song she's written about her grandson. When she sings in, the desert or the mountain will lean in close to give it a good listen.

And that's what allows granny to finish her journey!

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