Here are 100 books that How to Babysit a Grandpa fans have personally recommended if you like
How to Babysit a Grandpa.
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There is much in the world that we cannot change. This is much that can make us feel sad or angry. So, is there nothing we can do about all of this? I believe in the depths of my being that we can all reach out, be kind, and do good deeds. Instead of just complaining about wrong things, we can do something to try to make the world a little better, a little brighter, even if it’s just for one other person. That’s why I wrote my book.
I loved the relationship between the boy and his grandmother, and I thought the message was poignant and wonderful. It’s good to let children know that though some people have more than others do materially, it does not make them better. And it is up to everyone to reach out to those who have less if they can help.
Every Sunday after church, CJ and his grandma ride the bus across town. But today, CJ wonders why they don't own a car like his friend Colby. Why doesn't he have an iPod like the boys on the bus? How come they always have to get off in the dirty part of town? Each question is met with an encouraging answer from grandma, who helps him see the beauty and fun in their routine and in the world around them. This energetic ride through a bustling city highlights the love and understanding between grandparent and grandchild as the world comes…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a writer and child therapist, I believe in the importance of connecting with our families. Sometimes that means making sacrifices for our loved ones who need our support. When my parents moved to be near our family, we learned how to adapt to their changing needs. Like the books I choose, sometimes a grandparent moves in with you, sometimes you navigate them being grumpy, or other times you just listen to their wishes. But mostly, it’s just being there in the moment with a grandparent that opens our eyes, and heart, to something larger than ourselves.
If you know a grumpy grandpa, you’ll enjoy this one!
Daisy is thrilled her grandpa is visiting from China. While Daisy has many fun things planned, her grandpa is well… grumpy! He likes things a certain way and Daisy can’t dissuade him otherwise. (I can relate to that!) That is, until she discovers what he really likes and helps make him feel right at home.
A fabulous picture book that explores connection and fosters an understanding of others.
Daisy's Yeh-Yeh is visiting from China, and try as she might, Daisy can't get her grumpy grandpa to smile!
Daisy's Yeh-Yeh is visiting for the first time from China, and Daisy is so excited to meet him! She has big plans for all the fun they'll have together, like tea parties and snow angels, but when Yeh-Yeh arrives, Daisy finds him less jolly than she imagined. Throughout the week, she tries all sorts of things to get him past his grumpiness. Will she be able to make him smile before he goes home?
As a writer and child therapist, I believe in the importance of connecting with our families. Sometimes that means making sacrifices for our loved ones who need our support. When my parents moved to be near our family, we learned how to adapt to their changing needs. Like the books I choose, sometimes a grandparent moves in with you, sometimes you navigate them being grumpy, or other times you just listen to their wishes. But mostly, it’s just being there in the moment with a grandparent that opens our eyes, and heart, to something larger than ourselves.
Amah Faraway shows us how families can connect across distances and cultures.
Kylie is unsure about visiting her Amah in person, as well as all the differences that may arise between them. If you have an anxious kiddo, you’ll relate to all the uncertainty Kylie feels. But we soon see that Kylie embraces what makes them different and isn’t ready to leave Amah just yet.
A perfect picture book for discussing how to navigate cultural differences within the family.
A delightful story of a child's visit to a grandmother and home far away, and of how families connect and love across distance, language, and cultures.
Kylie is nervous about visiting her grandmother-her Amah-who lives SO FAR AWAY. When she and Mama finally go to Taipei, Kylie is shy with Amah. Even though they have spent time together in video chats, those aren't the same as real life. And in Taiwan, Kylie is at first uncomfortable with the less-familiar language, customs, culture, and food. However, after she is invited by Amah-Lái kàn kàn! Come see!-to play and splash in the…
Twelve-year-old identical twins Ellie and Kat accidentally trigger their physicist mom’s unfinished time machine, launching themselves into a high-stakes adventure in 1970 Chicago. If they learn how to join forces and keep time travel out of the wrong hands, they might be able find a way home. Ellie’s gymnastics and…
As a writer and child therapist, I believe in the importance of connecting with our families. Sometimes that means making sacrifices for our loved ones who need our support. When my parents moved to be near our family, we learned how to adapt to their changing needs. Like the books I choose, sometimes a grandparent moves in with you, sometimes you navigate them being grumpy, or other times you just listen to their wishes. But mostly, it’s just being there in the moment with a grandparent that opens our eyes, and heart, to something larger than ourselves.
Old Friends is a delightful book about finding friendship in unexpected places.
Marjorie, is true to herself and longs for a friend to share in her interests, just like with her Granny. Marjorie soon decides the Senior Friend’s Group might be the perfect place to find a friend for herself.
This book is sweet, humorous, and the illustrations are full of charm, inspiring young children to connect across generations.
Marjorie wants a friend who loves the same things she does: baking shows, knitting, and gardening. Someone like Granny. So with a sprinkle of flour in her hair and a spritz of lavender perfume, Marjorie goes undercover to the local Senior Citizens Group. It all goes well until the cha-cha-cha starts and her cardigan camouflage goes sideways. By being true to herself, Marjorie learns that friends can be of any age if you look in the right places.
As an author of experimental and genre-bending books, I evangelize people not only to read more books but to read books outside of their comfort zone. And while it doesn’t take much work to get adult readers to consider Young Adult titles, getting them to read Middle-Grade books has been a much greater challenge, which is a shame because middle school has a lot to offer. Some of the best and most life-changing books exist within the Middle-Grade category. My own Middle-Grade books were written with readers of many age ranges in mind.
There’s nothing childish about this rip-roaring fantasy adventure. I loved it long before Brandon Sanderson became a household name. While the book is steeped in whimsy, it sidesteps the pitfalls that render most Middle-Grade books inaccessible to adults. With realistic character motivations, a (strangely plausible) explanation for how all librarians could be secretly evil, and a cohesive magic system that could stand right beside any of Sanderson’s adult offerings.
I especially loved the way the book sucks the reader in with its deftly executed frame story. There are layers upon layers of storytelling here. I loved that, and I am not embarrassed to say it.
Experience the action-packed first book in #1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson's laugh-out-loud middle-grade fantasy series like never before—now in paperback with all new covers!
AN ANCIENT RIVALRY REAWAKENS.
Everything I'd known about the world was a lie.
On my thirteenth birthday, I, Alcatraz Smedry (yes, I got named after a prison, don’t ask) received my inheritance: a bag of sand. And then I accidentally destroyed my foster parents’ kitchen. It’s not my fault, things just break around me, I swear!
I thought the sand was a joke until evil Librarians came to steal it. You’re probably thinking,…
For me, the most affecting stories are those that are leavened with a sardonic sensibility. Italo Calvino, one of my favorite writers, notes “th[e] particular connection between melancholy and humor,” speaking of how great writing “foregrounds [with] tiny, luminous traces that counterpoint the dark catastrophe.” I’ve always veered toward the great literary comic writers—from Cervantes to Laurence Sterne to Pynchon, with a particular reverence for Nabokov. For me, there is no greater exposition of the underbelly of love and madness than Lolita; of artistic obsession than Pale Fire. Nabokov believed that the best writing places the reader under a spell, enchanting them with the magic of words — and I concur!
Eddy Bale becomes a crusader for children after the death of his own young son and decides to take a group of terminally ill children to Disneyland for a holiday. The antic hyperbolic tone of the narration is utterly at odds with the grave subject matter and the novel is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking.
Abandoned by his wife and devastated by the death of his twelve-year old son, Eddy Bale becomes obsessed with the plight of terminally ill children and develops a plan to provide a last hurrah dream vacation for seven children who will never grow-up. Eddy and his four dysfunctional chaperones journey to the entertainment capital of America--Disney World. Once they arrive, a series of absurdities characteristic of an Elkin novel--including a freak snowstorm and a run-in with a vengeful Mickey Mouse--transform Eddy's idealistic wish into a fantastic nightmare.
Time travel has always been my favorite genre of storytelling. Devouring every time travel book, movie, TV series, or comic strip I’ve come across in my life got me thinking a lot about cause and effect, chicken and egg, before and after. I eventually came to realize the literary world of prequels and sequels with multiple book series didn’t always have to be read in the order of release, especially if, as a reader, you had a late start that was still “new to you.”
Sequel/prequel/sidequel/timequel: reading a series out of order is a whole new type of adventure.
I’d never heard the term “epistolary novel” prior to reading Michael Kun’s The Locklear Letters, but was immediately smitten with the concept of telling a story solely through a series of letters and/or emails sent by the narrator.
This sequel follows the same template and the same protagonist a decade down the line. I liken it to finding a boxful of letters and using them to piece together a hilarious comedy of errors. Maybe you’ll keep digging and find an older box later, or maybe the archivist kept orderly annals, allowing you to move forward through the years.
Sequencing doesn’t matter, but the written words will leave you in stitches.
Sid Straw, the author of the correspondence that forms Everybody Says Hello, isn t Everyman, but he is someone everyone knows. He tries just a little too hard, says just a little too much, and that extra effort and those extra words are often his undoing. If only Sid could get out of his own way, his life would be wonderful. While Sid Straw may frustrate you at times, you ll end up rooting for him the same way you root for your own equally imperfect friends.
My new book, I Saw Satan at the 7-Eleven, is among other things, a love letter to heavy metal. I am a lifelong music obsessive: a record collector, concertgoer, maker of mixtapes, sewer of patch jackets. When I’m not writing or reading I’m playing guitar with the amp turned all the way up. And I have the tinnitus to prove it. Some of the books on this list are about metal, others are simply imbued with its rebellious dionysian spirit. But every damn one of them goes to 11, I can assure you of that. Enjoy!
If Hunter S. Thompson’s work is writing as rock ’n roll, early Mark Leyner is writing as thrash metal.
And like most practitioners of thrash, he mellowed out and slowed down as he got older. But his early shit? Look out! Faster than a bullet and harder than algebra. Whopping great gobs of language, slanguage, lexicon, and terminology gush up off the page.
Not only are there no brakes, there are seemingly no limits at all, his mind doesn’t wander, it careens and chugs and screeches and free falls… and if you follow you’ll be rewarded: with laughter, shock, awe, poignancy, and something akin to a deep, ecstatic numbness. Leyner’s words sharpen the senses and push the brain into the red, just like thrash metal does.
Welcome to Mark Leyner’s America, where you can order gallium arsenide sushi at a roadside diner, get loaded on a cocktail of growth hormones and anabolic steroids, and support your habit by appearing on TV game shows. Welcome to a wildly post-Einsteinian fictional universe where the locals include a speech pathologist with a waterbug fetish, a kamikaze airline pilot, and the lead singer for Brazil’s most notoriously nihilistic samba band.
I’ve been captivated by interesting people since I was a kid. Family
members always thought I asked too many questions of people, trying to
learn more about who they are. For that reason, when I started reading
fiction, I looked for characters with originality who opened new
horizons and who I wanted to hang out with. (That’s also why I host the
Novelist Spotlight podcast.) I agree 100 percent with novelist Larry
McMurtry, who said: “For me, the novel is character creation. Unless the
characters convince and live, the book’s got no chance.” The books I
placed on my list reflect this belief. I hope you dig them.
I’m a fan of authors who are brave enough to write with reckless abandon, and Tom Robbins, the author of this book, is one of the few. I laughed my way through this novel as it careened from the stock-market crash that starts the novel right through its conclusion.
A 300-pound psychic? A born-again monkey? African rituals? Tarot-card bombshells? A man who has learned how to say “vagina” in more than forty languages? This is a rocket ride and more about great and imaginative writing than a hard plot. Just my kind of stuff.
When the stock market crashes on the Thursday before Easter, you—an ambitious, although ineffectual and not entirely ethical young broker—are convinced that you’re facing the Weekend from Hell. Before the market reopens on Monday, you’re going to have to scramble and scheme to cover your butt, but there’s no way you can anticipate the baffling disappearance of a 300-pound psychic, the fall from grace of a born-again monkey, or the intrusion in your life of a tattooed stranger intent on blowing your mind and most of your fuses. Over these fateful three days, you will be forced to confront everything…
I am a mom, like any other mom, raising two young boys with big feelings. Those feelings grow and change and adapt as they age, but they are always strong. My experience raising them has inspired me to seek out books about managing those emotions and to write my own series about finding the joy in the chaos of kids’ “big feelings.”
I love the clever rhymes and hilarious antics in the Pig the Pug books, especially this one. This Halloween-themed story is fun to read over and over again. My sons get the biggest kick out of how naughty Pig the Pug behaves when he confronts the unsuspecting grownups who cross him on Halloween night. (My favorite line might be, “It filled him with feelings that had to be vented.”)
Ultimately, the story teaches kids good manners in the cleverest way by showing how monstrous Pig’s own manners are on Halloween night and the consequences of those actions. (Spoiler alert: the ending involves an upset tummy with disastrous results!)
Pig the Pug celebrates Halloween in this picture book from #1 New York Times bestselling author-illustrator Aaron Blabey.
Pig was a pug
and I'm sorry to say,
on Halloween night
he'd get carried away...
Pig, the world's greediest pug, is on the rampage for TREATS! TREATS! TREATS! But don't even think about being stingy with the goodies, because this candy-fueled glutton has some terrible tricks up his sleeve...
Rich with author-illustrator Aaron Blabey's signature rhyming text and unforgettable illustrations, Pig the Monster is a laugh-out-loud story that follows the eight previous books in the series (Pig the Pug, Pig the…
