The year in grandparents
The best stories from my site and beyond in 2019.
“Anne-Christine can rest easy now”
A murderer admits to his crime, but his victim’s mother—who is seeking custody of her grandson—fights on.
6 new novels about kids and their grandparents
In these recent novels for preteens—by some of the best children’s authors of our time—grandparents give kids the inspiration, strength, and love they need to navigate a perilous world.
The year in grandparents
In 2018, I wrote about a caravan of grandparents who stormed the Texas-Mexico border to protest Trump’s treatment of migrant children, Gabriel García Márquez’s memories of his grandmother, and many other topics.
“It’s been like dying and going to heaven”
Earlier this year, I published a long story about a grandmother in Houston, Stephanie Johnson, who had lost access to her grandson after her daughter was murdered and who was fighting in court to be reunited with him. Here’s an update on Stephanie’s plight.
When your grandma is Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Clara Spera recently graduated from law school. Her inspiration was her grandmother, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Because of his grandma, Gabriel García Márquez knew magic was real
Until he was eight, Gabriel García Márquez was raised by his maternal grandparents and a bevy of aunts and servants in Aracataca, Colombia, a small town near the Caribbean Sea that he fictionalized in his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. “I cannot imagine a family environment more favorable to my vocation than that lunatic house,” he later wrote.
The best movies about kids and their grandparents
Most movies put grandparents on the sidelines, when they put them anywhere at all. Here are some great ones that give them their due.
The best picture books about kids and their grandparents
These books aren’t just stunningly written and illustrated. They also perceptively observe the complexities of the new American family.
How Baby Boomers and Millennials can help one another
A new app will connect young people who need housing with empty-nesters who need income.
“What the elders see while sitting, the young ones standing on their toes won’t see”
Check out these proverbs to see how grandparenthood varies across cultures.
For grandparents raising grandchildren, is help finally on the way?
The Senate is considering a bill to assist the more than 2.5 million American grandparents who are raising at least one of their grandchildren.
He was hurt and angry, so his grandma made him work
After his parents divorced, Laird Hunt was sent to live with his grandmother, a “tough-as-nails taskmaster” with an 80-acre farm.
“Grandmammy was all the world to me”
Though Frederick Douglass was born into slavery, he was “a spirited, joyous, uproarious, and happy boy,” thanks to his grandma, who raised and protected him.
The grandparents who raised an Olympic champion
When she was six, Simone Biles was adopted by her grandparents. Now, she’s the best gymnast in the world.
A writer, her granddaughters, and the magic of Sicily
Francine Prose returns to an island she fell in love with years ago.