Why We Need Grandsons

February 1, 2024
The Why We Need series expands to include grandsons. Cutesy animal grandparents, never identified by gender, appear with their grandsons throughout, expounding on the ways their grandsons improve their lives and how they're looking forward to the future with them. The animals' species and activities generally aren't connected to the rhyming text. For example, "That's the thing about grandkids: They carry things on. / They link past and future, like day follows dawn. / The years that will come, and the years that are gone. / They are all a part of your story." In the accompanying illustration, a grandparent humpback whale (none of the species are identified in the text) swims, the grandson tucked under the older whale's pectoral fin. Like the recent Why We Need Granddaughters (2024), this entry has many of the same flaws of the series, namely the disconnect between the animal stand-ins for children and the text, the banal statements, and the vocabulary and concepts likely to go over young readers' heads. This one also seems oddly out of order as well; the text talks about the child growing and learning before moving back to talk about the day they were born and their first steps. Older adults with new grandsons may eat this up, but their grandkids aren't likely to request rereads. (Picture book. 4-7)

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