The Hello, Goodbye Window | Norton Juster | Builds Connections Between a Grandchild and Grandparents

The Hello, Goodbye Window | Norton Juster | window review

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The Hello, Goodbye...

	The Hello, Goodbye Window Norton Juster Michael Di Capua Books, 2005 - 32 pages average customer review:based on 111 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The kitchen window at Nanna and Poppy's house is, for one little girl, a magic gateway. Everything important happens near it, through it, or beyond it. Told in her voice, her story is both a voyage of discovery and a celebration of the commonplace wonders that define childhood. It is also a love song devoted to that special relationship between grandparents and grandchild.

Builds Connections Between a Grandchild and Grandparents

Two generations ago, many grandchildren grew up enjoying daily contact with at least one set of grandparents. In our wildly spread-out families today, grandparents are more likely to jet in for a brief visit. How can a grandchild hope to appreciate the special relationship that can be had with supportive, loving grandparents? The Hello, Goodbye Window can help.

In this book, grandparents are on center stage while parents recede into the working background. That's a nice change of focus for a start.

But these aren't remote grandparents, these are caring grandparents who pay a lot of attention and are always around. Any child would feel much more secure thinking about this concept of extended family.

The illustrations are spectacular: They could have been done by a gifted youngster (reminding me of Picasso's comment of how hard it is to make art like a child is) which makes the pages more accessible to a young grandchild.

I particularly like the way many of the skin hues didn't make you immediately think of one kind of ethnic background. As a result, many of the illustrations will probably make many young readers feel it's a book with illustrations about people who look like them.

A particular advantage of this book is that it could be used as a model for a child to create his or her own book (along with illustrations) about her or his grandparents and what they all do together. Now wouldn't that be fun!

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window review

A sweet, simple book about the joys of grandma's house, expressed from a child's perspective.

Like the story, not so sure about the illustrations

They just aren't my preferred style.

I like that the little girl is biracial, and that her grandparents are a biracial couple, that's always good to see (especially when it isn't A Very Big Deal). And I do like the way the colors in the book pop out. Not sure I like how it's done, though.

At any rate, it's a well-written story, full of just the sort of details you'd expect a five-year-old narrator to put in, and it's clear that everybody in this family loves each other very much. Definitely check it out.

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