55. Grandma’s Gift, by Eric Velasquez

 

55. Grandma’s Gift, by Eric Velasquez


Velasquez, E. (2010). Grandma's gift. NY: Walker & Company. 

This is the story of a Christmas holiday that young Eric Velasquez spends with his grandmother. After they prepare their traditional Puerto Rican Christmas celebration, Eric and Grandma visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a school project, where he sees a painting by Diego Velasquez and realizes for the first time that he could be an artist when he grows up. Grandma sees Eric’s interest in art and presents Eric with the perfect Christmas gift-a set of colored pencils and a sketch book to use in his first steps toward becoming an artist.

 This story is not only an autobiography, but it also has a special theme of the celebration of the special bond between a grandparent and grandchild.  It is the prequel to Eric Velasquez's biographical picture book Grandma's Records.  I found a teaching guide that has several different activities a class could do while studying this book.  It has a list of other books that could go along with this story. You can make Pasteles, which are important to the story.  You could do a social studies lesson on Juan de Pareja, the famous Latino-African artist who started out as a slave.

https://www.teachingbooks.net/media/pdf/UnivAL/Grandmas_Gift_BG.pdf

 

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