fannywrites

Title: Grandmother’s Vsit

Author: Betty Quan

Publisher: Groundwood Books, House of Anansi Press 2018

Word count :518

This is a warm story of a grandmother who teaches a young girl how to measure water for rice with a finger.  Grandmother tells stories from her childhood and walks the granddaughter to and fro from school. They have a special relationship.

Grandmother’s key ring hangs on a hook  so she won’t forget to take it when she leaves the house. Grandmother dies and after she is buried, the girl’s mother tell her that the spirit of a dead person can find the way home to say the final goodbye on the third day.

The girl waits and listens. She hears the jangle of a key against a jade key ring. She finds the missing key is no longer on its hook. It’s in a photo album, like a bookmark. The photo marked is a picture of the grandmother holding a little baby on her lap. The baby is the girl.

While I love the story, I question the part about the dead grandmother coming back to say good bye. I’m Chinese and have heard that the dead can come back on the third night. My grandparents died in Hong kong when I was a young woman in the U.S. I did not have the experience of feeling scared and waiting for their  return.

This book is a picture book, for children 6-9. Would a child be scared when they come to the end of the book.? The girl in the story is not scared. But I imagine a lot of children may be.