Maya Ajmera, Sheila Kinkade, Cynthia Pon; Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Our Grandparents: A Global Album
The Global Fund for Children/Charlesbridge Publishing, 2010.

Ages 5-8

Yeye. Babushka. Deda. Oma. What better way to celebrate our common humanity than to honor the love of our grandparents? As Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes, “In our role as elders, we help bridge the present with the past… We make sure that the wisdom of our ancestors is passed on to the next generation.” In Our Grandparents: A Global Album, the authors bridge both cultures and generations by inviting readers to meet grandparents across the world as they bond with their own grandchildren.

Each two-page spread features a simple line of text revealing a universal truth about family, illustrated with photographs of a grandparent and a grandchild from places as diverse as Yemen, Romania, and Peru. Vibrant country-specific photographs stand in lieu of drawn illustrations, transporting the reader to towns, villages, cities, and countryside to experience the diversity of ways grandparents play, learn, love, read and explore with their grandchildren. For example, next to “Grandparents explore the world with us,” we see three photographs: a Japanese grandson on the computer with his grandfather, a young girl in Greenland pushed on a sled by her grandfather, and a grandparent with grandchildren at the zoo in the United States.

Minimal text encourages children to interact with the striking photographs to identify different families’ activities, settings, customs and habits, while absorbing the importance of multigenerational bonding and the special role of grandparents. While the book does not include background information about the countries represented, the richness of the photographs and the questions they trigger provide a perfect springboard for a teacher or library group studying different cultures or places.  The authors’ meticulous attention to cultural diversity within countries, as well as across them, avoids the narrow representation of a country with a single group.  In photographs from the United States, for example, Native Americans feature prominently alongside Italian, African, Asian and mixed race American families.

Each photograph clearly labels the country of origin, and a map at the back of the book shows that “The grandparents and grandchildren in this book come from all over the world.” The authors also offer “Five Things to Do With Your Grandparents,” and part of the proceeds goes to The Global Fund for Children‘s grant-making for community-based projects benefiting children around the world.

Sara Hudson
April 2011