Review
Children's Laureate Anne Fine has won numerous awards, including the Carnegie Medal, the Whitbread Children's Novel Award and the Smarties Prize. Her great talent is that of making real-life dilemmas entertaining and readable for children. This novel shows how Ivan, Sophie, Tanya and Nicholas try to stop their parents putting their grandmother into a home. It's a well-balanced story. The author is sympathetic to the children but she also shows that caring for an elderly, confused relative in the home is not easy for the parents. The frustrations of trying to live their own lives are offset by the rewards of Granny's insights and wisdom. It's a book with a social conscience and there is a hint of preaching at times but warmth and humour are mixed in to prevent things getting too heavy. The children are well-characterized and at times astonishingly mature. Anne Fine isn't afraid to confront difficult issues head-on and she treats her readers as intelligent, enquiring personalities in their own right. (Kirkus UK)
Product Description
When Natasha and Henry find they can't care for Granny at home any more, they decide to put her in a nursing home. But their children, Ivan and Sophie and the younger two, Nicholas and Tanya, can't imagine life without their Granny and launch a full-scale attack to upset the plan. Nicholas and Tanya are in charge of having tantrums and nightmares about Granny going away, while Ivan and Sophie write the devastating 'Granny Project': a full account of their grandmother's life for the social science class. Their blackmail pays off and their parents allow Granny to stay, but there's a catch: all the cleaning, nursing and caring they used to do will now have to be done by the children. Natasha and Henry want their lives back, and quickly set about joining dance classes, going out and living it up. The children try to keep their side of the bargain but it's too hard. The family comes together again, everyone joining in to help with Granny up until she dies a few months later.
See all Product Description