The God of Grandma Forever

by Margriet Hogeweg

Ninety-three-year-old Grandma Forever has just moved in with Maria and her parents, but she is not always nice to her granddaughter. Despite her eccentric streak, Maria grows to love her, and when Grandma Forever dies after a few months, Maria discovers that she misses her grandma very much.

112 pages, Hardcover

First published April 23, 1997

About the author

Margriet Hogeweg lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She was born in 1966 on the island of Curaao, Netherlands Antilles, in the Caribbean. She is by profession a journalist and works for Dutch Radio. The God of Grandma Forever is her first novel.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

In exploring translated children's books from the Netherlands for my international children's lit class, I came across this quiet and unassuming upper-elementary book about that other kind of grandma - not the warm and cuddly grandma we're used to seeing depicted in television shows and picture books, but the prickly, cranky one we don't usually see in mainstream media. Maria is a feisty young girl who is forced to navigate her rocky relationship with her querulous grandmother when her grandma moves in to her attic, much to the young girl's chagrin. Grandma Forever, as Maria refers to her because she "was so terribly old (she was ninety-three)", does not coddle her young granddaughter and she doesn't fawn over her - but she does tell her strange Bible stories with a twist and call her names like "miserable mouse" and "dummy". Maria's affection for Grandma Forever develops in spite of herself, and the impression the old woman leaves on the young girl is deep and indelible, even after she is gone and Maria must struggle to reconcile her feelings about her loss.

This is a special book that is warm and highly readable.. Like many Dutch imports I've read for this age range, the narrative is lean and engaging, dark and funny at the same time. I recommend seeking this book out for a good read and a different perspective on an inter-generational relationship than that which we are used to seeing in mainstream kid lit.