By Tomie dePaola
The one where a grandfather teaches his grandson to walk, and years later, after a stroke, the boy teaches him.
Bobby is named after his grandfather, Bob, and the two of them are best friends. When Bobby was a baby, it was Bob who taught him to walk, standing him up and saying 'now one foot, now the other' until Bobby could cross the whole room. Grandpa tells Bobby that story over and over, and they build tall towers out of wooden blocks, always saving the elephant block for last. Then one day Bob has a stroke. He goes to the hospital for a long time, and when he comes home he can't walk or talk, and at first he doesn't even seem to know who Bobby is. Slowly, patiently, Bobby does for his grandfather exactly what his grandfather once did for him, standing him up, holding him steady, saying 'now one foot, now the other,' until block tower by block tower, Grandpa comes back.
For the child in a house where a grandparent has had a stroke or grown suddenly frail, this puts them in the role of the one who helps the recovery happen. It doesn't hide the hard part, that Grandpa can't speak and at first doesn't know Bobby, but it wraps the whole thing around a small, concrete ritual, the block tower and the elephant, that a young child can hold onto when the grown-up world feels scary.