After a challenging 18 months, 123 Andrés, the Latin Grammy Award-winning children’s singers and authors, invite families to say gracias to the workers and neighbors who keep their community strong and safe with ¡Mi Comunidad! / My Community!
You can learn more about the book in this interview.
Question: The fact that ¡Mi Comunidad! is a song and a book, in Spanish and English, shows the connection between music and reading. Have you turned any of your other songs into books before?
Andrés: Yes! We have two other books, Hola, Amigo and Diez Pajaritos, also published by Scholastic, and they’re also dual-language books, so you can read and sing in Spanish and English. Families love reading and singing together. Children love listening to the songs and then when they pick up the books, it helps them make a connection to the words.
Christina: We really believe in this connection between singing and reading, and in fact we have a whole album called “Canta las Letras” that is all about phonics in Spanish, with a song for each letter of the alphabet. We got our third Latin Grammy nomination from this album, and we know that millions of children across the US and in Latin America are using these songs to learn letters and letter sounds.
Q: What’s unique about making music for kids?
Andrés: The lyrics are for kids and the themes are educational, but we know that music has to appeal to parents and teachers who are going to be playing it for students! That’s why we work with producers and musicians from across the Americas to deliver songs that sound just like what you would hear on the radio. ¡Mi Comunidad! is a “merengue”, and it will make everyone want to dance and play it again.
We know kids are going to want to hear it on replay nonstop, and we take that responsibility very seriously. ¡Mi Comunidad! is going to help them learn about members of their community and be a jumping off point for them to talk with their adults about who is in their community the next time they’re on the bus or walking down the street.
Q: How can parents use a book like ¡Mi Comunidad! at home?
Andrés: It’s so powerful for adults and kids to spend time looking at books together each day. Parents can read the book – or sing it, too! At the back of the book you will find a QR code, where you can find the song in both Spanish and English. The refrain has a lot of repetition, so you’ll learn it quickly! We invite you to sing it together.
Christina: Another way to enjoy the book is simply to look at the illustrations together. The song mentions many community helpers, but there are even more in the illustrations that we don’t mention in the song. You can look at the book and point out more community helpers, and connect to recent experiences your child may have had in real life. You might remind your child of a recent trip to the car mechanic, or if you see a mural, talk about the artists who made it. Talk about members of your family, and how they help in the community, or in your home. And in the glossary of the book, you can read about even more community helpers.
With Thanksgiving coming up, ¡Mi Comunidad! can help you talk about gratitude. If we acknowledge and “see” the people who help our communities function each day, we can also express gratitude for them.
Q: ¡Mi Comunidad! depicts a community or town. Was there a specific place or city you had in mind?
Christina: We love what Mónica Paola Rodriguez, the illustrator, brought to this work! She’s from Puerto Rico and she brought the vibrancy of the Caribbean. Her sketches show homes that looked like brownstones, like you find in New York. When we saw her sketches, we immediately loved them, but it was very collaborative – we were able to provide feedback and new ideas. We encouraged her to add details, like a fire escape and satellite dishes hanging in the window, that we see in real communities, not necessarily a cleaned up “idealized” city neighborhood. We did Google image searches and created mood boards of the types of details we thought would bring the settings to life even more. Many of the images we pulled were from places we’d traveled to before, like Los Angeles, Queens, or from our current home, the Washington, DC area.
We travel across the US to lots of places – Chicago, Texas, California, Boston and more – performing at hundreds of schools and theaters each year. When we travel it’s always interesting to see how schools and houses are different in terms of architecture, neighborhoods are laid out differently, there are so many regional differences. But at the end of the day, so many elements of community are true no matter where you are. That’s the spirit of ¡Mi Comunidad!, to be proud of our community, and recognize the people who help us stay safe and healthy, learn and grow.
Q: The pandemic affected us all in so many different ways. As artists and performers, how did it affect you?
Andrés: Before the pandemic, we were traveling to so many cities and schools all over the country and we loved seeing students and teachers in person. With the pandemic, we knew kids and families needed us, so we had to jump into the virtual world. All of a sudden, in some ways we were more connected with some families because people started using our YouTube channel as a resource even more, so they were seeing us more often than once a year when we used to go in person. Parents and teachers were looking for resources and it felt great to step up to the plate and know that we were helping families. We’ve gotten videos from across the US, Mexico, Ecuador, and many more places showing kids learning about letters, counting, rhyming and more, through our songs and videos.
Q: This song, and this book, was written by the two of you together. What is it like to create as a team?
Andrés: We have been creating together for about a decade. We are married to each other, so we tour, perform, sing, write, and live together! We spend a lot of time together. [laughs]
Christina: My formal background is in education; I served as a public school teacher. Andrés’ formal studies are in music; he has a Doctorate of Music Performance! But now, we both work together to create all aspects of a song or book.
Andrés: Working together on anything – writing a song, planning a concert, recording a video – we have learned to listen to the other person, give feedback in a positive way, and give each other space to have projects or pieces that we lead on.
Christina: And, we have a lot of fun! Sometimes we disagree and argue [laughs] but mostly we have fun.
123 ANDRÉS are Christina and Andrés, the Latin Grammy-winning duo that captivates children and families by making music in Spanish and English. 123 Andrés maintains an active calendar of live and virtual concerts, joy-filled shows for student and family audiences, that get everyone singing, moving and learning. They have three Latin Grammy nominations, and they’ve been featured by The New York Times, NPR, along with having their music used in thousands of schools across the country. They are a credible source for music for kids in Spanish.
Christina was raised in the U.S., in a Spanish-speaking family hailing from Colombia, and studied theater and dance as a child. After serving as a classroom teacher in public schools and earning a Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, she found her mission teaching through music.
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