The children’s picture book “My Friend the Piano” uses rich language to convey a young girl’s feelings about music and composition. But while she is riding on waves of music, her mother is cringing from the sound of noise. Amazing how two perspectives can be so different.
On the day Mother announces it’s time for piano lessons, her daughter is upset, insisting that she already knows how to play. Mother’s not convinced.
The lessons didn’t go well. She couldn’t make the piano play for her. Mother can do it, and she can’t understand why the piano won’t play for her daughter, but it just won’t do it.
She’s not allowed to compose any new music until her practicing is done for the day, but this is torture. How can she practice when the piano won’t play for her? It only plays when she’s composing, not when she’s practicing.
One afternoon her mother tells her to stop practicing and to just think. Well, the thinking gets carried away and before she knows it, she’s composing the sound of a traffic jam. Mother isn’t amused.
Finally Mother decides to sell the piano, but everyone who comes to see it is disappointed. It just won’t play for them. The girl explains that the piano is her friend, and will only play while she’s composing. Then Grandmother comes to live with them, and Mother is even more set on selling the piano so there will be room for Grandmother.
Father moves the piano outside, and the girl sees her chance. She tells the piano to veer right, and it does. She leaps aboard and they go rolling down the street, out of Father’s grasp, across the street, across the freeway, and off a cliff. She jumps off just in time, and the piano goes headlong into the ocean, where it can frolic and leap with the dolphins.
Now she composes symphonies for pots and pans.
(This book was published in 1998 by Lathrop, Lee and Shepard and was illustrated by Kevin Hawkes.)
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