My Buddy, Dido!

In More Babas, Please!, (https://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol23/no38/morebabasplease.html) Marion Mutala celebrated the special place that grandmothers (i.e. Babas) have in their grandchildren’s hearts. In My Buddy, Dido!, Mutala turns her attention to grandfathers – grand-père, nonno, zaydeh, moshom, and so on – and their role in the lives of the little ones that they treasure. However, before I go on, I must provide non-Ukrainian readers with a small pronunciation lesson. In the Ukrainian language, the letter “i” is pronounced as a “long e” sound, and the concluding “o” is a “short o” sound. “Dido” (i.e. Дідо) is pronounced as “Deedo”. But, in some parts of Ukraine, the blend of “D” and “i” is pronounced in such a way that the word sounds more like “Geedo”. As a result, some Ukrainians refer to their grandfathers as “GeeGee”, and in my own family, we always called our grandfather, “DeeDee”. OK, end of the linguistic lesson, but it’s important to know that the word for Ukrainian grandfathers is not pronounced like the name, Dido, the unfortunate young woman of Greek mythology.

Much like More Babas, Please!, the cover of the book features a diverse group of grandfathers with their grandkids. One little girl sits quietly enjoying the storybook her grandfather reads to her, and Dido’s grandchildren sit smiling in his lap, one wearing a blue onesie, the other wearing yellow (blue and yellow being the national colours of Ukraine). But, instead of a traditionally-embroidered shirt, Dido is attired in a tie, white shirt, and cardigan, the typical post-church Sunday outfit worn by grandfathers when I was a little girl. The kids in this portrait are active: one little boy blows soap bubbles, two little guys sit astride their grandfather’s shoulders, one boy reaches for the soccer ball held by his grandfather, and a pig-tailed little girl swings in the air. Everybody is enjoying their time together.

Once again, Olha Tkachenko is the illustrator for Mutala’s book, and her drawings face each page of rhymed text which is bordered with the geometric cross-stitch patterns of traditional Ukrainian embroidery. Grandfathers can be:

Giant, short, plump or small.
Thin-haired, long-haired, toupee-haired, bald.
Every colour, build and size.
Cheerful, silly, fun-loving, wise.

Whatever the grandfathers look like, each rhyme ends with the statement, “My buddy, Dido!” Sometimes, Dido instructs his granddaughter in Ukrainian dance steps; other times, it’s enough for a grandson or granddaughter to just hang out with Dido. While mothers and grandmothers are typically the keepers of culture and heritage, grandfathers may be just as important in passing on tradition. One frame sees Dido reading “a story in Ukrain-ni-an” to his grandson. While the Baba of More Babas, Please! was renowned for her perogies, borscht, and buns, Dido also bakes bread and makes his own special soup.

Grandkids of this era might like their “screens and computers galore”, but when it comes to play-time with Dido, “His jokes and stories mean so much more.” And, like Baba, Dido is there for the good times and the not-so-good:

Who listens to me when I’m mad?
Who consoles me when I’m sad?Who has time when I’m in a pickle
or when I’m ready for a tickle?
Who cheers me up when I’m down?
Who tries to act like a clown?
Who wraps his arms around me tight?
Who’s there to help me get it right?
Dido is! He’s my friend
and on him I can depend.
I’ll trust and love him till the end.

My buddy, Dido!

Dido’s grand-children stay in touch, phoning him (on a corded land-line with a rotary dial – last century’s technology) to express their love and their thanks for his being such an important part of their lives. The final page of the book reminds us that time passes all too quickly and that little kids become big kids who tower over their grandfathers. It’s clear that one thing hasn’t changed: the love and affection that each has for the other. Of course, for many of us, the death of a grandparent is one of the first great losses we experience. There are lots of smiles in that final portrait, but there’s one grandson who is grieving, and he cradles the soccer ball which his grandfather held when he was a child.

Although the drawings in My Buddy, Dido! offer plenty of visual reminders of Mutala’s Ukrainian heritage, like More Babas, Please!, this is not a story exclusively about Ukrainian grandfathers. It’s an easy-to-read book to share with a grandchild or any young reader who will enjoy its simply rhymed text. The book is unpaginated, and the endpapers are decorated with the word for “grandfather” in a plethora of languages and varying script and font styles. It’s something of a tradition for Mutala to include a family recipe in her books, and in this one, Mutala offers her father’s recipe for Holushki Soup, a simple vegetable soup, in which “holushki”, little dumplings, are cooked. I haven’t had Holushki Soup since childhood, and reading the recipe really brought back memories of lunchtime at my grandparents’ home. Because my grandfather had an extensive vegetable garden, the soup pot was always on the go.

My Buddy, Dido! is a worthwhile acquisition for elementary school libraries and the resource collection in schools which offer Ukrainian language programing as well as for public libraries serving communities with significant Ukrainian-Canadian populations. But, it’s less specifically “Ukrainian” than some of Mutala’s other books, and it serves as a reminder that the love of grandparents for their grandchildren is common across all cultures.