Author: Barbara Park
Illustrator: None
Awards: Bluebonnet award
Grade level: 5th-6th
This book is about a young boy who grows up with his grandpa, Skelly, who has alzheimers. The book starts with a flashback of Jake and Skelly and how they came to live together with Jake's single mother. Jake describes how it has been having a grandpa with Alzheimer's, and how he has grown to resent his grandpa. He always has to take care of him, and how he has been struggling outside of the home and at school. As Jake is preparing for his 8th-grade graduation, his grandpa goes on an outgoing and goes missing. After a stressful 48 hours, the family becomes terrified when a cap is found next to a lake that looks like their grandpas. Thankfully after searching the lake, their grandpa wasn't there. Skelly comes home later that night with a friendly cab driver and Jake realizes that he could've almost lost his grandpa. He decides to invite his grandpa to his 8th-grade graduation, but while there he gets separated from the rest of the family and wonders on stage. Jake goes up to help his grandpa, and he stays with the rest of the family until Jake finishes his graduation.
I love this book so much and will definitely have it in my class! It gives an amazing view of how Alzheimer's can affect many people, not just the person who has Alzheimer's. It is a bigger chapter book and has a vocabulary that can be complicated for younger children, so I definitely think an appropriate grade level is upper elementary like 5th-6th grade. In my class, I would use this book to introduce students to Alzheimer's and how it can affect people.
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