Grandpa is Here
Tanya Rosie and Chuck Groenink
Walker Books

Meeting her Grandpa at the airport with her parents, the little child narrator quickly overcomes her initial shyness when he gives her an enormous hug, and on the drive back home she anticipates all the things she wants to share with Grandpa.

When he opens up his case, out comes the aroma of Persian spice and other culinary delights, including walnuts from his very own trees. The little girl doesn’t speak any Farsi and Grandpa seemingly doesn’t speak English but they laugh in the same language.

After he’s had a nap, our protagonist takes the opportunity to show Grandpa various places she loves as they take ‘the darkest path in the world’, wandering downhill and up tall hills. She introduces him to a horse named Santiago and Malou the frog and hills she calls Mount Sledge-Top and Rabbit View. As they sit looking at the view, the child wishes Grandpa could stay to share the coming of spring. “Grandpa is like snow, I never want him to go, never want his magic to leave,’ she thinks to herself.

As the sun goes down the two make their way back to the family home and there everyone sits and shares a celebratory meal

until they can’t stay awake any longer. Somebody does though and she creeps in to see her Grandpa fast asleep; gently she reaches out her hand and touches his and ‘hope that these days go slowly’ – just like the falling snow flakes she sees through the window.

Tenderly told through Tanya Rosie’s lyrical rhyming narrative in which the loving connection between grandpa and granddaughter is implicit; so it is too in Chuck Groenink’s illustrations which radiate the warmth and tenderness of the intergenerational bond. Like that tight hug at the start of the story, this will surely evoke strong emotions in adult readers who share this with children.

Memories are made like this.