A GIFT OF FEATHERS

Two young girls grieve their grandmother.

Talula and her little sister, Rhea, love visiting Grandma Dot, who lives in a city two hours away from them. The girls talk to their grandmother about her ever growing collection of feathers and then play a game that involves putting all 99 of them—the same number of years as Grandma Dot has lived—in some kind of order. The elderly woman dies before her 100th birthday, so the last part of the story goes through her funeral, with "some prayers in Hebrew that I didn’t understand.” After the funeral, at home, the girls find two feathers that remind them of their grandmother and bring them to the yearly yahrzeit (a Jewish mourning custom explained in the author’s note). Written in a tone that feels like a much older person recalling memories of childhood experiences and emotions, this is a meandering but straightforward tale about a White-presenting Jewish family, with similarly straightforward illustrations, describing a realistic slice of life that may be calming to some but boring to others. This story could help some children contextualize their grief after losing a grandparent, but otherwise it has limited appeal. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A direct, quiet tale of loss likely to resonate with kids grappling with grief but few others.