books
Grandma According To Me
Written by Karen Beil
Illustrated by Ted Rand
Doubleday, 1992
Recommended ages: preschool - grade 3
A loving tribute to the special bond between grandparents and grandchildren.
Inspiration
Sometimes it’s impossible to know how an idea sprang to life. But Grandma According to Me came from a conversation my mother and her friends had about their grandchildren. One told his grandma her skin didn’t fit her face. Another worried her grandmother’s face had cracked.
My mother asked me to write a nonfiction book explaining to kids why old people get wrinkles. I tried. I used all my reporter’s skills to research the topic. Try as I might, it didn’t feel like a book that would fascinate kids—or me!
Then I realized something important: my mother saw herself differently from the way the rest of us did. She saw wrinkles, we saw softness. The parts of her she didn’t like, we thought were wonderful.
Sitting on our camp porch, I wrote the first draft—a back-and-forth between two points-of-view, those of a granddaughter and her grandmother. While a book can’t capture a whole relationship, this was my best way of telling my mother how much I loved her—just the way she was.
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