Grandpa’s Stories

A sensitive child grapples with the impending loss of her kind, gray-haired grandfather as the two spend time together throughout the seasons. In autumn, he makes her a notebook; in winter, she sits on his lap as he “tells me tales from when he was a boy, of Indian sweets and homemade toys.” Using conditional statements with lyrical metaphors and similes, the girl imagines the ways she might hold onto him: “If all the world were springtime, I would replant my grandpa’s birthdays so that he would never get old.” Colpoys illustrates with loose, painterly lines in citrus and light blue shades—the child is pictured surrounded by an overgrown meadow of blooming wildflowers, her dark scribbly curls visually echoing the plants’ tendrils. After her grandfather dies, the girl discovers that writing and drawing her memories of him helps keep him close. Readers mourning a grandparent or other family member may find solace through Coelho’s sentiments about love living on through cherished memories. Ages 4–8. (Apr.)