A book can help with
For the particular magic between the very old and the very young.
The bond between a child and a grandparent is its own thing entirely: unhurried, indulgent, full of stories and time. It’s also where many children first meet the reality of ageing, that someone they love is slowing down, forgetting things, or living too far away to see.
Books celebrate the good of it and gently prepare for the hard of it. A story about a grandparent and grandchild honours something children treasure, and, when the time comes, a well-chosen book can help a child understand memory loss or distance without frightening them.
Here’s what I’d reach for. Find your child’s age and start there. If you’ve lost a grandparent, the page on death and grief may be the gentler place to start.
Time with grandma and grandpa
For the littlest ones it’s simply the joy of being with them: the treats, the lap, the total attention.
A cheerful lift-the-flap book about making pizza with grandpa, full of the small everyday pleasures of time together. There’s a companion Grandma and Me too, so you can pick whichever fits. Bright and simple, and just right for little hands.
or on Bookshop.org
A day in the life of a big panda and a small one, celebrating the particular closeness between a grandmother and a grandchild. It’s warm and cosy and lovely to share, especially over a video call. A sweet one for a new grandparent to read with a toddler.
or on Bookshop.org
Their world, and yours
Now they can follow a proper story about a grandparent’s world, and about the closeness that crosses distance and difference.
Rosalba and her grandmother take flight over the city in a joyous imagined adventure, with Spanish woven warmly through the English. It celebrates a grandmother’s world and the bond across generations and languages. Vivid, exuberant, and a favourite the world over.
or on Bookshop.org
A little girl describes staying at her Nanna and Poppy’s house, where the kitchen window is where you wave hello and goodbye and everything in between. It captures exactly what a grandparent’s house feels like to a child. A Caldecott winner, and a warm, unhurried read.
or on Bookshop.org
When they grow older
Older children start to notice their grandparents changing. These handle ageing and memory loss with real tenderness.
Everyone carries balloons full of memories, and as James’s grandfather begins to lose his, James learns he can hold them for him. It’s a beautiful, gentle way to explain memory loss and dementia to a child, sad in places and hopeful at the end. One of the kindest books on the subject.
or on Bookshop.org
A small boy sets out to find the memory his elderly friend Miss Nancy has lost, collecting things that mean something to him and giving them to her one by one. It’s a lovely, quiet story about what memory is and what the young can give the old. Much used in classrooms, and touching without ever being maudlin.
or on Bookshop.org
Knowing them as people
Older children start to see a grandparent as somebody with a whole life behind them, often at the same moment that life begins to falter. Each of these holds those two things together.
Felix is getting nowhere at school with his ADHD until his granddad starts teaching him chess, and the two of them slowly become the point of each other’s week. Granddad is not well, and the book does not hide that. Warm and British and quietly done.
or on Bookshop.org
Fionn is sent to a wild Irish island for the summer to stay with a grandfather he barely knows, whose cottage is full of candles that hold whole days inside them. It is a fantasy, and underneath it is a straightforward story about a grandfather’s memory going. His mother is unwell and his father drowned before he was born, so both sit in the background.
or on Bookshop.org
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Something to do together
A page of questions for a child to ask a grandparent about when they were young, so the stories get written down while they can be. I’m making it now, and it will live here soon.
Time with a grandparent is one of the great gifts of a childhood, and it’s finite in a way children don’t yet grasp. Books celebrate it, and, when things change, help a child understand what’s happening without fear.
So encourage the questions and the stories while there’s time, and let a child stay close even when age or distance makes it harder. And if you’re facing a loss, the page on death and grief has gentler books for that.
These pages are written for the grown-ups looking after a child: parents, teachers and carers. A good book can sit beside a worried child, though it never stands in for a real conversation, or for proper support when something feels too big to carry alone.