Gone to Grandma's. Be Back Soon!

International Children’s Literature

“I Really Want to See You, Grandma”

Written and illustrated by Taro Gomi

Published by Chronicle Books, originally written in Japanese

International Lit

Have you ever wanted to see someone so bad that you felt like you had to go see them as soon as possible? Well, this is exactly how Yumi and her grandma feel. They both have a sudden urge to see each other at the same time! They both set out for each other’s houses but of course they aren’t there when they arrive. Yumi goes back and forth from her house to her grandma’s, and Grandma goes back and forth from her house to Yumi’s, but they just keep missing each other. Coincidentally they keep passing each other without even realizing it. Will Yumi and her grandma ever figure out how to see each other?

The simple book has plenty of space for the wide landscape illustrations. The watercolors are very saturated and have very earthy tones to the colors with pops or pink and orange. The illustrator uses mostly simple lines as you can see in the drawing of the house at the beginning of the story. The drawings are very simple but portray the plot and characters very well.

I chose Social Studies for 1^st grade. I would use this while teaching about the map. We could point out the different hills and roads that we see in the book, then we could talk about different landforms that we see in real life. It would also be neat to incorporate a discussion about distance and how we can travel faster and more efficiently than we could long ago.