Children's Books: Giselle Potter's ‘Before She Was My Grandmother'

Wall Street Journal

3 days ago

'Everyone has a story that is much bigger than the part you can see,' a young girl realizes in 'Before She Was My Grandmother' (Enchanted Lion, 52 pages, $19.99), a picture book written and illustrated with characteristic sublimity by Giselle Potter. Here is a tender account of a child's connection with a grandparent, which also tells of the older woman's life before the girl was born. During their visits, the grandmother, Alice, uses items from a box of memorabilia to evoke aspects of her past. A nesting doll reminds her of how she'd been wheelchair-bound and unable to run like other children because her joints were stiff. ('Sometimes, Alice felt just like her wooden doll.') Brass binoculars recall the time she was sent away from her family to a sanatorium in Switzerland, in hopes of a cure. What might sound like a troubled history feels anything but heavy in this buoyant and appealing book. The lightness comes partly from Ms. Potter's signature style of art, with its marzipan colors and naif figures; it comes also from the way she leavens sad moments with comforting ones. For example, Alice's disability meant she couldn't frisk in the waves with her sisters, but she could sit on the sand 'collecting stones and shells.' For the modern 5- to 8-year-old, accustomed to the absent presence of adults on their phones, the most striking moment may come at the beginning, when the child says that her grandmother 'makes me feel important when she looks into my eyes and listens carefully to everything I have to say.'
In 'Peggy Goes for a Walk' (Post Wave, 24 pages, $15.99), a grandfather shows similar relaxed attentiveness on an autumn ramble in the woods with his little granddaughter. Written and illustrated by Tonka Uzu, this simple book for children ages 3 to 5 begins with the girl, Peggy, rushing off in her red rainboots and yellow overalls. 'Come on, let's go!' she calls back to Grandpa, whose 'legs are slower.' Together the pair find mushrooms, listen to a woodpecker, lie in the leaves and feel the patter of rain. By the end, their roles are reversed. Now it is the grandfather urging: 'Come on, Peggy, let's go.' And it is her turn to feel tired. After their exciting (but age-appropriate and low-key) outing, her legs 'don't move quickly any more.'