  | Miss Irwin Author: Say, Allen | |
| Price: $23.98 | ||
Summary:
A young boy, aware of his grandmother's forgetfulness, helps her recall a time when she was a kindergarten teacher teaching her students about hummingbirds and their nests.
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (03/01/23)
Booklist (04/01/23)
The Hornbook (00/05/23)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 04/01/2023 In Say’s latest sparely told but emotionally intense gem, a small keepsake serves as talisman between a visiting child and his grandmother, who has been forgetting things. Andy’s grandma calls him by a different name at first, even telling him that she’s not his grandma but his teacher. Then the tiny nest she lifts out of a storage box touches off a rush of fragmentary reminiscences about once leading her class outside to hang a hummingbird feeder. In the soft-focus art, quiet domestic scenes give way to flashbacks in which the child and the gray-haired elder are transformed into younger versions of themselves, until two wordless tableaux add a silent beat that brings her effort to “remember, yes remember . . .” back to the present and she takes his hand, calling him “Andy” again. Readers who have elder relatives of their own with failing memories may draw comfort from this intimate episode, which was created, the author writes, in tribute to his own daughter’s “luminous” kindergarten teacher. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.
