Grandad's Camper: A picture book for children that celebrates LGBTQIA+ families

Product Information

For the hope for new adventures, and the glimpse of intergenerational kindness and understanding, this lovely book should be on every shelf. The artwork is enticing and rich, and readers will be happy to pore over the pages studying details like Grandad's friendly dog and the textured backgrounds as they read and reread the story.

An effective tool for teaching empathy, and the intergenerational bond at the story's center is a heartstrings puller. So, their amazing granddaughter comes up with a clever plan to fix up the old camper and get Grandad excited to explore again.

As they look through photo albums, he talks fondly about how they travelled the world together in their beloved pink campervan. This picture book, in which a girl helps her grandfather embrace life again following the death of Gramps, may well aid young readers in understanding others' grief.

Following this, children create expanded noun phrases to enhance their descriptive writing and use these to support them in writing poetry about an object which holds a special memory to them.Children create labels for the items, then explore the concept of memories by thinking about how things special to them hold memories and form connections to times and events in our lives. Grandad, white, and now balding, recounts their adventures to his young grandchild who hangs on every word. Her favourite pastime, however, is to snuggle up with Grandad while he shares tales of his past adventures with Gramps.

Before they were Grandad and Gramps, two young men, waving a rainbow flag from their pink VW bus, were a romantic couple, traveling the world-or at least Europe-together, camping under the stars. This poignant tale acknowledges the sadness of losing a loved one, but also celebrates the pleasure of remembering those who have touched our lives. While there, the protagonist, who narrates, and their grandfather play the usual games and do the usual activities, but Grandad also tells stories about how he and Gramps, a man of color who is now deceased, met and fell in love while traveling in an old VW microbus. They will then send a postcard home from Grandad and Gramps on their beach adventure before planning, drafting and editing a sequel for the book where Grandad and the little girl head off on their own campervan adventure.The illustrations are full of warmth, colour and joy, beautifully echoing the excitement of discovery and adventure. It's so important that little ones grow up and see their type of family set-up reflected in the books you share with them. The book reflects on an aspect of mature gay life, a piercing sense of loss, and in the child, of the possibilities still to be found. Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning. Every summer, the narrator of this heart-warming tale goes to stay with her grandad in his pretty old cottage by the sea.

It is also a story that deals with grief and the importance of sharing memories about cherished people who have passed. The children begin the sequence of learning by exploring a dusty memory box from the attic which contains objects linked to Grandad’s memories of his time in the campervan with Gramps. Caregivers, especially older ones, may see this book as an opportunity to talk about departed loved ones and introduce their happy memories to a younger generation-many a family will find themselves pulling out photo albums to relate their own origin stories. The art throughout Grandad's Camper is dashing, the layouts somehow chockablock and yet never too busy. Inspired by these tales, the narrator encourages Grandad to fix up the van, and the two take it for a road trip to the beach.VERDICT For the hope for new adventures, and the glimpse of intergenerational kindness and understanding, this lovely book should be on every shelf. The depiction of a loving, same-sex relationship between Grandad and Gramps, as well as the different ethnicities of the main characters, ensure this wonderfully inclusive book reflects a range of experiences, representative of today’s society.