
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.
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.
Subtly and artfully, this picture book depicts the bond between a boy who’s questioning his gender identity and his steady, open-minded grandma.
Many immigrant parents seek to bring their own parents here to help with childcare while they toil in grueling jobs, two sociologists recently wrote in The New York Times. President Trump wants to stop them.
Most movies put grandparents on the sidelines, when they put them anywhere at all. Here are some great ones that give them their due.
These books aren’t just stunningly written and illustrated. They also perceptively observe the complexities of the new American family.
Many kids in India are growing up far from their grandparents, so a grandma in Bangalore is using her smartphone to tell them bedtime stories.
All the Girl Scouts troops in her California town were full, so Kathy Richardson started a new one for her granddaughter and her friends.
I’ve been asking grandparents around the country what they’re called and why. Here are a few of their stories.
Grandparents and grandchildren need one another, so parents shouldn’t stand in the way, says grandmother and journalist Connie Schultz.
For kids, summer means freedom. These books beautifully capture that.
Nancy Schatz is famous in Maine for the blueberry pie she learned how to make from her mother, who learned how to make it from hers. Here’s the recipe, which Nancy’s granddaughters have begun to master, too.
A picture book about what happens when parents get out of the way.
“Imagine it: During the holidays, instead of using gadgets to ignore each other, we might use them as an excuse to look each other in the eye and listen.”
It’s not important that children know about nature, Rachel Carson believed; what matters is that they delight in it. But they won’t unless they’re shown the way, she warned.
“Standing at one remove from the new partnership, and all the hue and cry the blending of a family can involve, they have the potential to play a unique role for the stepgrandchild—part grandparent, part wise, trusted confidante.”
There’s not enough good art about the bond between kids and their grandparents, so I asked Rebecca Layton, an illustrator based in Austin, to create some.