Awards

• Booklist Editors' Choice
• Children's Book Committee at Bank Street College Best Children's Book of the Year
• Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) Choices
• Kirkus Best Middle-Grade Book

Overview

“I hate the food here,” Grandpa said. “ They’ve taken all the joy out of it. Not even the water tastes any good.” “Perhaps you should run away,” I suggested. “I did a lot of that when I was young,” he said. “But I think it’s a bit late now...” But by the time I had to leave for the bus, we’d made a plan.

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9781776572335

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Reviews

A boy helps his ailing grandfather go home one last time in this Swedish import. Gottfried finds life enlivened by his feisty grandfather, who's always been 'difficult.' They are true kindred spirits. Confined now to the hospital with a broken leg and weak heart, Grandpa's 'worse than ever.' Gottfried's dad avoids hospital visits because Grandpa's naughty behavior and declining condition make him 'tired and sad.' He rejects Gottfried's plea to bring Grandpa to live with them, insisting he's 'too sick and angry and stubborn and crazy.' Pretending to be at football training, Gottfried visits Grandpa in the hospital and suggests they should run away. Lying to his parents about where he's going overnight, Gottfried surreptitiously transports Grandpa to the island house where he lived with Grandma until she died. Back home for one night, Grandpa happily reverts to his old clothes, savors Grandma's last jar of lingonberry jam, and says farewell to his old life before returning to the hospital. Gottfried's accessible, unadorned, heartfelt first-person narration reveals the depth of his bond with his grandfather as well as his insightful understanding of his father's limitations. Linear, colored-pencil drawings capture key interactions between characters and revel in Grandpa's choler. Characters are white (or, in Grandpa's case, grouchily pink). A touching, realistic, gently humorous story of how a sensitive boy copes with his treasured grandfather's decline. --starred, Kirkus Reviews --Journal

Author Information

Ulf Stark was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1944. He wrote around thirty books for children and young adults, translated into more than twenty languages. He won many prizes in Sweden and internationally, including the German Youth Literature Prize and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. He was shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2018. Kitty Crowther lives in Belgium. With English and Swedish parents, and born in Brussels, she has written and illustrated over forty books which have been translated into twenty languages and won many awards. In 2010, she received the world’s most prestigious prize for children’s literature: the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award.

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