"Grandma Heaven" & "Grandpa Heaven"
Shutta Crum and Ruth McNally Barshaw are two of my most favorite people in the kid lit world. They have two new books out, “Grandma Heaven” and “Grandpa Heaven” that sweetly feature my own parents as two of the people enjoying the afterlife.
Is Heaven a fun-filled place of laughter, companionship, and love? Who knows. Perhaps it’s simply a state of the universal/eternal mind. Regardless, Shutta Crum knows that here in this corporeal world there are young worriers who’ve suddenly lost a beloved grandparent, and those bereft children need to be consoled. Shutta began working on Grandma Heaven and Grandpa Heaven years ago when her four-year-old grandchild asked, “Are you going to die, Grammy?” Shutta reassured her granddaughter that that was not going to happen for a long time. But the child’s question sparked the idea for these two books about grandparents having a great time in Heaven. The grandparents drive snazzy cars in Heaven, study prehistoric animals, have pets,bake, read, knit, bowl, tinker with broken things, and zip in on zip-lines. But the most important job of a grandparent in the afterlife is watching over all the grandchildren of the world and sending the memory of a hug when it is needed. Importantly, these two books are non-religious and multicultural. Heaven in Grandma Heaven and Grandpa Heaven is populated by grandparents from around the world so that all children can rest assured that their grandparents’ love never dies.
Grandma Heaven and Grandpa Heaven (published by Lawley Books, 2023) can be found online wherever books are sold. Also, ask for them at your local bookstore, or to be purchased by your local library. Paperback editions available: Sept. 28, 2023. Spanish editions: January 2024.