In my experience, most of the children’s books that I’ve encountered that deal with the relationship between children and the elderly all veer into Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs territory – namely, the relationship is all about the child coming to terms with the fact that the old person is either going to die or has just died. Grandpa Green isn’t as gut-punchingly sad as that first 10 minute montage from Up – you get the impression that Grandpa Green doesn’t have many regrets (good for him) – but I do love how both works portray the elderly as living, dynamic people. Both works are about relationships between generations and how the elderly and the young interact and deal with memory. In many ways, Grandpa Green reminds me a lot of Pixar’s Up.

Grandpa Green doesn’t ignore aging, but it doesn’t make it scary either. The ways that Smith is able to express emotion, memory, and the passage of time through the composition of this living, breathing garden is really something to behold. I will say that Grandpa Green probably most closely resembles Smith’s Princess Hyacinth, but it adds this wonderful muted palette of greens and grays to an organic storytelling world that Smith creates out of an intricate and beautiful topiary garden.

He’s proven himself as one of the most playful and innovative artistic talents in kids lit for years, so the fact that you want to frame every page of Grandpa Green and hang them around your house isn’t an earth-shattering revelation. It’s NO surprise that Smith, as an illustrator, has delivered another gorgeous picture book. Specifically, I’m talking about his latest picture book, Grandpa Green, a book that I think, stands as a big shift in tone for the author, but it’s a shift that pays off beautifully.įirst, don’t get me wrong. And we very purposely don’t own either title, because, when we take them out from the library, she sees it as an enormous treat.Īll that being said, with the regard that we have for Smith’s body of work, it’s really spectacular to know that he can still surprise us as a creator.

My daughter swears up and down that Smith’s The Big Elephant in the Room and The Happy Hocky Family – two books that he both wrote and illustrated – are two of the funniest books she’s ever read. We are huge fans of his work as an author and illustrator across a whole slew of titles like The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Seen Art?, Madam President, Cowboy and Octopus, Princess Hyacinth, It’s a Book… the list goes on and on. Lane Smith is one of those creators that my family completely takes for granted.

Grandpa green by lane smith