Title: Alex Asks Grandpa About the Olden Days
Subtitle: A 1940s Story
By Gary L. Wilhelm
Illustrator: Pieter Els
Publisher: Wise Owl Factory
Available at Amazon
ISBN: 9781729375280 (2020)
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
Author Speaking in a Real Grandpa’s Voice
Grandpa Shares His Childhood Memories
Gary L. Wilhelm is doing his Grandpa Thing for his grandson Alex, exactly as a grandpa would. He talks about commonplace things and events from his childhood like furnaces in the basement that must be fed coal to operate and his scary moment with a bull. Commonplace when he was a child, but not so common for today’s children with so many families headed for cities and suburbs and in this fast-moving computer age like telephones without dials—or pushbuttons!
And he does in his real grandpa voice. It’s as natural as if a real grandchild were sitting on his knee, but every reader benefits from the closeness of his point of view. Alex Asks Grandpa About the Olden Days achieves something close, something rare and it does it easily, conversationally, and with love.
