Jedidah Morley (text), Karen Erasmus (illus.) My Super Special Granny, Empowering Sources, 1 Dec 2017, 40pp., $17.00 (pbk), ISBN: 9781925592047
This book is a celebration of the special relationship between a child and a grandparent. Amelia loves visiting her grandmother and she is devastated at the thought of moving house and being unable to visit her grandmother as often as she usually does. Throughout the week before the move, Amelia visits Granny and each time she does, her grandmother has out her knitting needles and a different ball of wool. These are used as a kind of prompt for imaginary adventures when Amelia and her ‘super special Granny’ fly through the clouds, take part as jockeys in a major horse race, go deep-sea diving and chase crocodiles, among other unlikely things. There is a shared joy in these imaginings and they help to make the prospect of parting less painful for Amelia. At the end of the week, Granny presents Amelia with a multi-coloured jumper which has been the real purpose of all that wool, a jumper which Amelia can wear in her new house to remind her of her grandmother and which, even more wonderfully, smells of the same hot chocolate and muffins that her grandmother’s house does.
Although sometimes a little two-dimensional, the illustrations add to the narrative and give additional information to the written text. Granny, with her grey hair and glasses is perhaps a little of the stereotype of a grandmother, but she does wear trousers and clearly has a sense of fun.
This book will work well as a read-aloud and sends a message that, although things do sometimes change, that change does not always have to be the end of what we know.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
