Breakfast

Micaela Chirif
Illustrations by Gabriel Alayza
Lima: Polifonía, 2013
ISBN: 9780763587819

♦ 2014 White Ravens Selection

A grandmother prepares breakfast and immerses us in her everyday world. Choosing the day’s fruit or setting the table become rewarding tasks when done with care, or when delusional marine beings burst into the kitchen. A giant octopus tasting orange juice, a mermaid coming out of the dishwasher or mysterious pirates insinuate that we are never alone. The beings that live in the depths of the sea or in our imagination are always accompanying us.

Music by Jaime Chirif Watanabe
Comments

“Breakfast is a gem. And it is because that dance between the grandmother and the diver will go down in the history of the genre for expressing in all its simplicity, in all its intelligence, and in all its mystery something that we know but that we cannot express.” Mario Montalbetti

“The grandmother and the man in the diving suit have breakfast holding hands. This is not just a simple children’s story. It tells us about the dormant madness of grandmothers who keep secrets, and loves that they remember next to their grandchildren, knowing that they will not guess who they think of, but what they will keep will be the intuition that their grandmother’s head is in another world, space or time. And everything can happen during a simple Breakfast, an illustrated album presented by Micaela Chirif and Gabriel Alayza.” Cecilia Podestá

“The story’s protagonist is an adorable grandmother who gets up to prepare breakfast and defies routine, reshaping the everyday in an overflow of imagination, freedom, humor and tenderness. There is a perfect symbiosis between the text in which the narrator in the first person tells us what she likes about breakfast and the illustrations in which her playful and crazy parallel worlds are triggered.”
La memoria y el sol (Memory and the sun)

Breakfast with music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFC16sTgJyI&feature=youtu.be

Breakfast
http://www.revistaintemperie.cl/2014/12/19/desayuno-de-micaela-chirif-y-gabriel-alayza-por-mario-montalbetti/

My crazy and wonderful grandma
https://redaccion.lamula.pe/2013/11/13/mi-loca-y-maravillosa-abuela/ceciliapodesta/

Breakfast questions old age stereotype
http://cultura.estadao.com.br/blogs/estante-de-letrinhas/cafe-da-manha-questiona-estereotipo-da-velhice/

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