Book Descriptions
for When I Am Old with You by Angela Johnson and David Soman
From Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC)
A warm, tender relationship between a grandfather and his young grandson is recounted through the child's verbalized projections of all the things they'll do together when the child is as old as Grandaddy: "When I am old with you, Grandaddy, we will play cards all day underneath that old tree by the road. / We'll drink cool water from a jug and wave at all the cars that go by." Gentle, softly colored watercolor paintings show the African-American grandfather and grandson doing today all the things they look forward to doing together in the future. (Ages 3-6)
CCBC Choices 1990 . © Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 1990. Used with permission.
From the Publisher
"A small child imagines a future when he will be old with his Granddaddy and will sit beside him in a rocking chair and talk about everything...The poignant reality that time will never allow these two to coexist at the same age is softened by the fact that they do not have to be the same age in order to share happy times...The African American child and grandfather are...recognizable to anyone who has ever shared the bond of family love across generations." - School Library Journal, starred review
Publisher description retrieved from Google Books.