SOMETHING ABOUT GRANDMA

Julia and Grandma have their first summer together, just the two of them.

Grandma lives in a small town outside of Mexico City. Her house is covered with pink bougainvillea, and her garden is filled with herbs and fruit trees. Things feel magical here—in the mornings, Grandma buys sweet bread from a woman who carries it all in a basket on her head, and at night she writes secrets in her notebook. And Grandma has a strange intuition; she always seems to know when Julia is sneaking into the garden for daisies and limes and when the girl is about to fall off her bike. A letter from home makes Julia realize how much she misses her parents, but Grandma knows just what to do to make her feel better, and when Julia’s parents return for her with her new baby brother, she has learned a few new tricks to soothe her crying sibling. Straightforward text moves the narrative along smoothly, while whimsical and soft illustrations imbue the story with wonder; some pages have excerpts, in Spanish, from Grandma’s notebook layered softly in the background. Readers will emerge feeling just as calm as Julia. Julia and her family are brown-skinned and cued as Latinx. (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A quiet book about the love between a grandmother and her granddaughter.