Books About Grandparents: 23 Picture Books, Sorted by the Situation Your Family Is In

How to choose from a list of grandparent books

Three questions narrow any list faster than a star rating.

1. What is the situation? A book that suits a weekly visit can be the wrong one for a grandfather who has started to forget, so the sections below are sorted this way.
2. How old is the child? The ages here are the ones given by the page we opened for each book: a publisher, Publishers Weekly, Reading Is Fundamental, the Children's Book Council or Kirkus. They differ by a year or two between pages, so treat them as a starting point.
3. Whose grandparent is it? Every book here is about somebody else's grandparent, which makes it easy to share and is also its limit.

The whole guide in one table, with one book to start from for each situation.

Everyday love: a bus ride, a purse, a storm, a summer

Plenty of picture books about grandparents have no problem to solve. A child spends time with someone who loves them, and the book looks at it. These suit a child who likes seeing an ordinary visit on the page, and in our opinion they are the safest first buy.

• Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Christian Robinson (G. P. Putnam's Sons, ages 3 to 5). CJ rides the bus across town with his grandmother after church every Sunday and wonders why they have no car. She keeps pointing him at what is worth noticing along the way.
• Grandma's Purse by Vanessa Brantley-Newton (Knopf, ages 3 to 5). Grandma Mimi arrives with her purse, and a visit turns out to be full of surprises: jewelry, tokens from around the world and something special for her granddaughter.
• Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco (Puffin, ages 5 to 8). A grandmother and her granddaughter gather ingredients around the farm to bake a cake before the storm arrives, which turns the girl's fear of thunder into a job to do.
• Abuela by Arthur Dorros, illustrated by Elisa Kleven (Puffin, ages 3 to 7). Rosalba and her grandmother imagine flying over the streets of New York City, and Spanish words are woven through the English text.
• Bigmama's by Donald Crews (Greenwillow, ages 4 and up). Summers at his grandmother's rural Florida home, from the three-day train ride to the chicken coop, the barn and the pond, told with a grown man's longing for them.
• Grandma's Records by Eric Velasquez (Bloomsbury Children's Books, ages 5 to 8 according to Publishers Weekly). Eric spends his summers in his grandmother's apartment in Spanish Harlem, where she fills the days with merengue and conga music and shares her Puerto Rican heritage with him.
• The Hello, Goodbye Window by Norton Juster, illustrated by Chris Raschka (Little, Brown, ages 4 to 8). The kitchen window at Nanna and Poppy's house is, for one little girl, a magic gateway: everything important happens near it, through it or beyond it. A Caldecott Medal winner.

What the seven share is a grandparent at the center of an ordinary day or summer. For a book that says one particular thing, look below.

Grandparents who live far away

Distance is common. In AARP's survey of 3,283 grandparents, published in June 2026, 29 percent had at least one grandchild living 500 miles or more away. The question allowed several answers, so some of those grandparents also had grandchildren nearby. Three picture books take the miles seriously.

• Tea with Grandpa by Barney Saltzberg (Roaring Brook Press, ages 3 to 7). In bouncy rhyme, a girl has tea with her grandfather every day, and he is on the computer screen, on a video call. It treats that ritual as a real visit.
• Close to You from Far Away by Erica Root (Running Press Kids, ages 4 to 6 according to Kirkus). Gigi moves far from her grandmother, who keeps telling her they are close from far away, through phone calls, painted rocks and letters. The book includes instructions for sending postcards.
• Take Me Out to the Yakyu by Aaron Meshon (Atheneum, ages 2 to 6 according to Publishers Weekly). A boy has one grandfather in America and one in Japan, and the book sets a baseball game with each of them side by side.

A practical way to use any of them: each house gets a copy and you read the same page on a video call. More ideas that work across the miles are in gifts for grandchildren, which has a section on distance.

And if the grandparent far away would rather be in a book than read about one, our free preview draws the two of them from a photo each, so you can see before you decide.

Across a language, or into a new home

Some grandparents arrive from somewhere else, or move into the family's home, or simply speak a language the child does not. Two of these three are about exactly that and about what bridges it; the third is a photo album.

• Drawn Together by Minh Lê, illustrated by Dan Santat (Disney Hyperion, ages 4 to 8). A boy visits his grandfather and finds they share no language, until they start to draw together and the drawing does the talking.
• Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina, illustrated by Angela Dominguez (Candlewick, ages 5 to 8). Mia's grandmother leaves her sunny home to live with Mia and her parents in the city, and a language gap sits between them. Then Mia spots a parrot in a pet-shop window, Mango, and has an idea: Mia helps Abuela learn English, and learns some Spanish too.
• Our Grandparents: A Global Album from The Global Fund for Children (Charlesbridge, ages 4 to 7). A photo book of grandparents and grandchildren from around the world, in brief text, with a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It has no plot, which makes it a good book to point at and talk over.

If that is your family, the grandparent can read a page in their own language and you can read it in English: a book is a good excuse for both.

A grandparent's stories and the past

These three each show a grandparent as more than the person a child sees every day, in a different way.

• Song and Dance Man by Karen Ackerman, illustrated by Stephen Gammell (Knopf, ages 3 to 7). Three grandchildren follow their grandfather up to the attic, where he puts on his old bowler hat, cane and tap shoes and shows them the vaudeville act he once danced. A Caldecott Medal winner.
• Grandpa's Face by Eloise Greenfield, illustrated by Floyd Cooper (Puffin, ages 4 to 8). Tamika loves everything about her grandfather's expressive face, until she sees him rehearsing a part in a play and sees a face she has never seen on him.
• Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, ages 4 to 7). Say paints his family's cross-cultural history: a young man leaves Japan to see North America, crossing the Pacific by steamship and traveling through deserts, farmlands and cities. A Caldecott Medal winner.

All three are about somebody else's grandparent, and the most reliable way to get your own grandparent's stories is still to ask for them. If the grandmother is the person you are choosing a present for, gifts for grandma from her grandchildren has ideas that start from exactly that. And if you would like a book where the child finally asks and Grandma tells the whole afternoon, see your own two drawn, free.

When a grandparent is aging, ill or forgetting

A child may notice a change before anyone has explained it. A picture book cannot explain an illness, but it gives the child a picture to hold and you a way into the conversation. These three are about memory; read them yourself first.

• The Remember Balloons by Jessie Oliveros, illustrated by Dana Wulfekotte (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, ages 5 to 9). James's grandfather holds a balloon for each of his memories. As they drift away from him, James becomes their keeper and shares them one by one.
• Grandpa Green by Lane Smith (Roaring Brook Press, ages 5 to 8). A boy walks through his great-grandfather's garden of shaped trees and hedges, each one a piece of the old man's life. The garden holds what he sometimes forgets. It is about a great-grandfather, so for a grandparent it is a close fit rather than an exact one.
• Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox, illustrated by Julie Vivas (Kane Miller, ages 4 to 6). A boy helps an elderly friend recover her memories. She is a friend, not a grandparent, so it is here for the memory theme, and its Children's Book Council listing says it is used in homes, classrooms and volunteer training programs.

Our advice, not a rule: tell the child what is happening in words they can follow, and let the book be the second conversation, not the first.

When a grandparent has died

Two books on this list include a death. They are for a child who has already been told, or is about to be.

• Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs by Tomie dePaola (G. P. Putnam's Sons, ages 4 to 8). Four-year-old Tommy visits his grandmother, Nana Downstairs, and his great-grandmother, Nana Upstairs. When he learns that Nana Upstairs will not be there anymore, he has to say goodbye. dePaola draws on his own childhood memories.
• The Two of Them by Aliki (Mulberry Books, ages 4 to 8). A grandfather and his granddaughter care for each other from the day she is born until the day he dies.

Read either one yourself first, so you know where the hard page is. A picture book is not a substitute for the conversation, and if your child is struggling, your pediatrician or school counselor is the right next call.

Grandparents raising grandchildren

In AARP's 2026 survey, about one in ten grandparents were primary caregivers with legal responsibility for their grandchildren.

• Sometimes It's Grandmas and Grandpas, Not Mommies and Daddies by Gayle Byrne, illustrated by Mary Haverfield (Abbeville Kids, ages 2 to 5). A girl raised by her grandparents describes how close she is to her grandmother. When a storybook shows a traditional family, she wonders about her own parents, and the book ends by saying that grandparents can do this just as well. It never explains why the parents are not there, so it fits many families.

It is the only picture book on this subject that we could verify, and there may be others we did not find.

If you are the grandparent in that house, a book with only the two of you in it may fit: in The House That Remembers, below, nobody else appears in any picture, so nothing in it assumes another adult in the room. Whichever you choose, you can start with one photo each and write the dedication yourself.

For toddlers and preschoolers

Under three, the right book is short, sturdy and mostly pictures. There is one board book on this list.

• Global Baby Grandparents by Maya Ajmera (Charlesbridge, board book, ages 0 to 3). Photographs of babies and grandparents from around the world playing, singing, reading, eating and cuddling.

From about two or three, short picture stories work, and the table shows where each book on this list starts, by the youngest age its listing gives.

If a toddler is about to share their grandparents with a new baby, books for a new big brother or sister covers that change, and best books for 3 and 4 year olds is the next step up. Our own books start later, at age 3 for the grandmother title and age 4 for the grandfather one, so for a younger child the board book above is the better pick.

A book for Grandpa in particular

In case the book is for a grandfather, or about one, here is the same shelf sorted by him.

• A grandfather with a past: Song and Dance Man, Grandpa's Face, Grandfather's Journey.
• A grandfather you cannot easily talk to: Drawn Together, where drawing does the talking.
• A grandfather far away: Tea with Grandpa, and Take Me Out to the Yakyu, which has two of them.
• A grandfather who is forgetting: The Remember Balloons and Grandpa Green.
• A grandfather who has died: The Two of Them.

If the book is a present for him, gifts for grandpa from the grandkids starts from the grandfather who says he wants nothing, and the next section has a storybook for the grandfather who has never told his stories himself.

A book where the child and their own grandparent are the characters

Every book above is about somebody else's grandparent. That is its strength, because it is easy to share, and its limit, because the grandmother on the page is not yours. We are a studio that has been drawing families since 2020, about ten thousand of them, and we make two storybooks where a child and their own grandparent are drawn from their own photos. Here is what each is, and where each is not the right choice.

The House That Remembers, for ages 3 to 10, is one slow afternoon at Grandma's house. A tin on the shelf will not stay shut, and inside it are buttons, a ribbon and one small brass key. Then the house starts handing things over: a leaf pressed flat in an old coat pocket, a stair worn low by one foot going up and down ten thousand times, a burn ring under the tablecloth from a cake with nine candles. Each is a question, and she says it is nothing, that it was ages ago. Until she sits down and tells the whole afternoon. It is written in rhyme across thirteen illustrated spreads.

The Unfinished One, for ages 4 to 9, is for the grandfather who has never told the stories himself. The shed at the bottom of the garden is always locked, and today it is open. On its shelves are hundreds of small wooden animals, and every one is a day of his life: the day he got lost, the day of the sea, an ordinary Tuesday that turned out to matter. On the bench, held in a clamp, is one carving that is not finished, and the child knows exactly who it is. Grandpa joins the story from the third spread. It is not a book about him dying: it ends with the handing over, not with a goodbye.

In both, the story and the scenes are ours and the same for every family who picks that title. What is yours is a face for each of them, drawn from one photo of the child and one of the grandparent; the child's name in the words; the word they use for their grandparent, Grandma, Nana, Grammy, Grandpa or Papa, printed on every page; and the dedication, which a grandparent who orders the book can write themselves and which we print word for word on its own page. What to write in a book for a child has a way in.

Where this is not the right choice: it is not a book about loss or a way to remember someone who has died, and the two books in the section on loss are better for that. It does not tell your family's real stories, because the story is ours; for that, a recorded conversation or a handwritten page is the better gift, and gifts for grandchildren has ideas. For an older child, something to do together may fit better than a picture book.

The free preview draws the child and the grandparent from two photos, about half a minute for each face, with no card and no account, so you can try it on the two faces you have before you decide. Every book is checked by a real artist, then printed in the United States after you order, and the book page and the cart show the real delivery dates before you pay. How this kind of book works, and how to tell a keepsake from a name swap, is in our guide to personalized books for kids, and the other titles with somebody they love drawn in are on the Someone they love shelf.

Reading them together, and Grandparents Day

A picture book about a grandparent works best when it has an audience of two. A few ways to use any book on this list:

• Read it with the grandparent in the room, or on the call, and stop once to ask: does this remind you of anyone, or any place?
• Let the grandparent answer after the last page. The best question a book can leave is one only they can answer.
• Write inside the cover. Two sentences in your own handwriting are what gets reread in twenty years, and Christmas messages for grandchildren has lines to borrow if you are stuck for words.

Grandparents Day is the first Sunday in September after Labor Day, according to federal law, so it falls between September 7 and 13. Grandparents Day gifts goes through what to give. Christmas is the other date to plan for: our storybooks are printed after you order, and December 1 is the last date we can promise for Christmas, so a book you choose in October has time.

If you only take one idea from this guide, take this one: pick the book that matches what is true in your family this year, not the one with the most stars.