I just finished reading a book about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves the girl to find out about her life before she was a grandmother; and to learn the lesson of how this girl and her mother and grandmother are connected to the people who live in their 6 flat building. The way this kid (she’s 7) who’s a wise “old soul” does this is through realizing that the fairy tales her grandmother told her growing up had elements of truth to them. Left for her to decode on her own. It was reminiscent of the movie Big Fish, if you’ve seen that, where the dad tells fantastical stories that don’t turn out to be totally untrue. This kid is hilarious and way smarter than other kids her age and she gets picked on for it. Her grandmother used their stories so she’d have an escape and took her to imaginary lands where she could be the hero.
This book about the little girl and her grandma was about loss and love, how people are rooting for you when you don’t even know it, and it even tied in some magic and love for Harry Potter. When the dog dies, who from the girl’s vantage point is as big as a human, I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe. Not because I’m an animal lover but because it was the moment in the book when the girl realizes how much people (and not people) are trying to protect her despite their own lives they are trying to live. She learns that she isn’t the only one reeling from the loss of her grandmother, that other people knew her grandmother from another time and grieve her too. Like how my mom’s college roommate walks in a 5k for breast cancer every year with her daughter in memory of my mom, but from a time before my mom was a mom, and when she meant so much to this woman as a roommate and a friend. This book reminded you you of the power of a good story – both through the tales the grandmother created for her granddaughter and through the story of the girl finding truth in them.
go read: My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry.