Age range 6 to 9

A gentle, delicately illustrated story about loss with both a a sweet sensory dimension, as well as a cosmic one

A boy’s grandfather goes away suddenly, never to return. How could he leave just like that, without even saying goodbye? His smell remains in his sweater, and his shoes wait to be worn, but he is nowhere to be found. As the boy looks and wonders, a refrain runs through his mind, Grandpa is gone. The boy lingers in the midst of his grandfather’s things, to feel him and remember, but also as a way of beginning to say goodbye. There in the quiet, the boy begins to imagine his Grandfather returning to the planets and stars, the faraway home from which he must have come.

This is a beautifully made book, with a centre double gatefold that incorporates the cosmic dimension of the story into the very space of the book. It is also a wonderful story of agency and imagination, which shows a child in the very process of filling the absence that death brings through storytelling.