Ammachi’s Glasses

MY THOUGHTS

Reading Ammachi’s Glasses is the adult equivalent of digging in to a decadent slice of chocolate cake. All the goodness minus the calories!

I needed a treat today, and I found myself reading this wordless picture book.

Ammachi’s Glasses opens with Ammachi (Malayalam for grandma) waking up and looking around her bed for glasses. When she doesn’t find them, she decides she can’t let that stop her day and carries on! What follows is truly hilarious as she messes up her washing, her cooking, her cleaning, and even her dinner! She ends up going to bed in a tree instead of her room! The family, including the pets and the crows that frequent their place, are horrified and confused. Will Ammachi get her glasses back? Or will she face another day where everything she does is horrifying? 

This book is a classic wordless picture book from India. As soon as you open the book, the reader is able to understand that the story is set in Kerala. Ammachi’s clothes, her distinctive earrings, the family house with its calendar and knife on the wall all offer clues to the setting of the story. Proya Kuriyan’s illustrations are simply genius, and I can never get enough of the blissful look on Ammachi’s face as she goes about her day without her glasses! It is the tiny details on every corner of the page that arrest your attention and force you to spend more than a few minutes taking them all in. The story is hilarious, and the details add so much value. This is a good book to read to understand how an illustrator tells the reader about the setting of the place without using the actual words. Talk about how much of the story depends on the illustrations and how your mind immediately forms a connection to the place.

This is a great picture book to read with your child because you will find yourself returning to it multiple times to discover something new each time you look through it. Definitely treat yourself to this one!