Available:*
Material Type | Library | Call Number | Item Barcode | Location |
---|---|---|---|---|
Book | Searching... Haverhill Public Library | J/PIC/QUAN | 31479006962004 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Methuen - Nevins Memorial Library | J-ER QUA | 31548003200228 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... North Andover - Stevens Memorial Library | JP ALL ABOUT ME TOUGH TOPICS QUA | 31478003527661 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Westford - J.V. Fletcher Library | E QUAN | 31990005133991 | Searching... Unknown |
Book | Searching... Wilmington Memorial Library | PICTURE BOOK QUAN | 32136003334905 | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Grace says goodbye to Grandmother in this touching book about love and loss.
Grandmother lives with Grace's family. She teaches her how to measure water for rice. She tells her stories about growing up in China and together they savor the flavors of her childhood. Grandmother says goodbye when she drops Grace off at school every morning and hello when she picks her up at the end of the day.
Suddenly, Grandmother stops walking Grace to and from school, and the door to her room stays closed. Father comes home early to make dinner, but the rice bowls stay full. One day, Grandmother's room is empty. And soon after, she is buried. After the funeral, Grace's mom turns on all the outside lights so that Grandmother's spirit can find its way home for one final goodbye.
Carmen Mok's gentle illustrations show the love between a child and her grandmother in this story that will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one. Betty Quan's picture-book debut is haunting yet hopeful.
Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.1.6
Identify who is telling the story at various points in a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.1
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3
Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.7
Use information gained from the illustrations and words in a print or digital text to demonstrate understanding of its characters, setting, or plot.
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7
> Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.2
Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 3-This moving tale of love and loss features the special bond between a young girl and her Chinese grandmother. In a gentle first-person narrative, the child explains how her grandmother teaches her the secrets of making rice and shares stories about growing up in China. Grandmother walks the young narrator to and from school each day, until one day, her father takes over. After that, Grandmother's bedroom door stays closed, until one day, only her jade bracelet, photo album, blue jacket, and house keys are left, and Grandmother is no longer there. After her grandmother's funeral, the girl's mother turns on all the outside lights of their house so that Grandmother's spirit can find its way home for one final goodbye. Soft, digitally painted illustrations complement and add to this poignant story, which together capture the comfort of closure, tradition, and memory. VERDICT This is a wistful, tender story recommended for children who are confronting the loss or imminent loss of a loved one. A welcome addition to collections needing books on death and grief.-Brianne Colombo, Fairfield Free Public Library, NJ © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
In brief, poignant text, a young girl recalls specific items and moments as she makes peace with the passing of her beloved grandmother, who used to tell stories of her childhood in China. There are lots of books about the passing of a grandparent, but this one stands out for its authentic culturally-specific elements, both textual and visual. Soft, comforting digital paintings illustrate the gentle intergenerational story. (c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Every morning, Grandmother says goodbye to a little girl after they walk to schooluntil one day, Grandmother says her final goodbye.The book's unnamed girl spends idyllic days with her grandmother from China, learning how to measure water for rice, listening to stories about China long ago, and eating pickled plums. Digital paintings in a muted palette of grays, pinks, and greens convey their quiet relationship. One day, Grandmother stops walking the girl to school and a sadness falls upon the household. Then, abruptly, Grandmother's room is empty, and "A few days later, my grandmother is buried." That night, the family follows a Chinese tradition to welcome their loved one's spirit home for a final goodbye. Quan's simple portrayal of a loving intergenerational bond draws readers in emotionally, but it lacks important details. Has the grandmother been living with the family for a long time, or was it, as the title suggests, a visit? It is unclear whether or not Grandmother fell ill, if she had dementia (she sometimes forgot her house keys), or how much time has passed between each scene. While the book is a sensitive portrayal of the death of a loved one, including an ending with closure, the story lacks contextual details, resulting in more questions.This sweet and gentle story about losing a loved one is emotionally lovely but likely to require some interpretation on the parts of caregivers. (Picture book. 4-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A young girl expresses love for her grandmother, who walks her to and from school, teaches her how to cook rice, and shares pickled plums and family stories. Then, one day, Grandmother is gone; a burial follows, with one final goodbye. While Mok's illustrations place this story in a western town, with characters lacking distinct racial features, there are touches of Chinese culture in the kitchen teapot, cups and spoons, and the symbol for happiness on a wall hanging. Quan's details about the final resolution, the grandmother's spirit returning to a lighted house for a final goodbye, emphasize the connection to Chinese tradition. Mok's digital illustrations have a light touch, with soft greens filling most double-page spreads until the loss, when a darkness appears. In that same gentle vein, Grandmother's passing is almost a whisper in the text and illustrations, and the lighted window on which the book ends signifies a continuing connection. Pair with The Funeral (2018), by Matt James, for another look at the rituals of death and remembrance.--Edie Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MY NANA NEVER explained to us why she'd chosen to go by a more culturally neutral shorthand for "grandmother" instead of the customary - and irresistible - Greek word "Yiayia." She was a proud Greek- American who worked as a receptionist until she was 84, listened to Nana Mouskouri records on the hi-fiin her living room, and rolled dolmades so perfectly uniform they belonged in an encyclopedia of domestic miracles. "Chryso mou," she used to say out loud when she took my sister's face in her hands, then my older brother's, and then mine; we were all her "golden one" ("dear one" is the less literal translation), but the fierceness and unselfishness of my Nana's love made each of us feel as if we'd been singled out. THE BROOKLYN-BASED illustrator and graphic designer Cecilia Ruiz captures the particular tenderness of grandmothers in A GIFT FROM ABUELA (Candlewick, 29 pp., $15.99; ages 4 to 8), her first book written expressly for young children. Ruiz's "The Book of Memory Gaps" (2015) and "The Book of Extraordinary Deaths" (2018) are dazzlingly Goreyesque in their cataloging of suggestive memory disorders and evocative deaths from the seventh century B.C. to the present. "A GiftFrom Abuela," with its block-printed illustrations in muted colors, is more modest in its storytelling and heartwarming in its message, though Ruiz still manages to capture complex social realities (the economic crisis in Mexico in the early 1990s, the alienation of older adults). The story itself is simple: Abuela saves her hard-earned pesos to buy a special present for her beloved granddaughter Niña, though when the government devalues the peso and she fails to exchange it, the money becomes worthless. To liftAbuela's spirits, Niña's solution is to cut the old bills into pieces for elaborate papel picado banners and use them to decorate the drab apartment, allowing Ruiz to create an art-project-within-a-picture-book story that had my own 2-year-old transfixed. An abuela's love is valued and returned in new and innovative forms. At the book's end, Niña and Abuela are spending a Sunday in the park, having pan dulce and watching the people go by: "It was still their favorite thing to do," Ruiz writes. THE GRANDMOTHER FIGURE in Oge Mora's debut as an author-illustrator, THANK YOU, OMU! (Little, Brown, 31 pp., $18.99; ages 4 to 8), is a life-giving force with a nearly bottomless stew pot. The story opens in a kitchen at "the corner of First Street and Long Street, on the very top floor" (the city is unnamed), where Omu, dressed in a yellow drape and gold drop earrings, is tasting the delicious stew that she plans on eating that night. Mora's illustrations use collage to give the book's world a sense of depth and vibrancy - the stew in the pot is represented by an ever-changing calico design - and the stream of cooking odors trailing out the apartment window gives the first hint of the book's folkloric plot. An author's note informs us that in the Nigerian language Igbo, "omu" means "queen," and that in Mora's family, the word also meant "Grandma." As Omu's cooking pot simmers on the stove, the delicious smell travels, and soon a succession of people are knocking at the door to get a taste: a boy from down the hall; a female police officer; a hot dog vendor; a cabdriver. Omu, thanks to the deliciousness of her stew, becomes a grandmother to the whole community. When her pot finally runs empty and it looks as if Omu won't have anything to eat that night, the community returns the love by feeding Omu with an impromptu potluck dinner. Mora is especially deftat using pastels and china markers to give the faces of her cutout figures roundness and expression; similarly, the street scenes are filled with cutouts (a lurching taxi, a flying bus, an energeticlooking soccer player) that will have toddlers reaching out to grab them. THE WRITER BETTY QUAN and the artist Carmen Mok strike a more somber note in GRANDMOTHER'S VISIT (Groundwood, 29 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8), their collaboration about the persistence of grandmothers - and the sense of absence that follows their loss. Told in the first-person, the book follows an unnamed girl through her days with her Chinese-born grandmother (it's never stated outright, but the girl's grandmother is her primary caregiver while her parents are offat work), learning how to get the proportions right when cooking a pot of rice, or listening to her stories about eating red lotus beans on holidays back in her village. Suddenly the girl's grandmother is no longer at her side after school, and the door to her bedroom is always closed. Her death is handled suggestively, and the book's color palette darkens as the story takes a beguiling turn in its last pages and veers into the territory of a traditional Chinese ghost story. Small children shouldn't be frightened, though - the spirit of this grandmother is much too loving and protective for that. LEST WE FORGET about grandfathers and their unearthly powers, the beloved children's author Tomie dePaola, best known for the classic witchy grandmother story "Strega Nona" (1975), has created the beautifully spare picture book QUIET (Simon & Schuster, 28 pp., $17.99; ages 4 to 8). This meditation on seeing and stillness teaches mindfulness to children - and the adults who read to them - in a nonpreachy way. Everything about the book is pared-down essentials, from the one-word title to the sparing use of text to the colorfully elemental illustrations. The book opens with a grandfather, looking very much the artist in a banded hat and long scarf, standing in a green field with his two grandchildren and a dog, watching the bees swarm a patch of flowers. A praying mantis climbs a lily stalk, and a mother fox lies curled with her young in a hidden den. "My, oh my," the grandfather says. "Everything is in such a hurry." The family moves through the landscape in the pages that follow, finally sitting down on a bench in order to notice, see deeper and describe. "The birds are just like us," the grandfather says at one point. "Taking a rest, singing their song." In its slowness and its serenity, "Quiet" is a prime example of the "late style" in dePaola's trajectory (think Shakespeare's "The Tempest" or Verdi's "Falstaff") and a corrective to the distraction that threatens to engulf us all. Leave it to a grandparent with an uncanny giftof sight to remind us how to stop, look and really see. But quietly.