By Linda Jacobs Altman
The one where a girl uses old photos and scrapbooks to reach her grandmother, who has Alzheimer's and no longer knows her.
Nine-year-old Tamika dreads the Sunday visits to the nursing home, because Momma Lou, her grandmother, has Alzheimer's and never remembers who Tamika is. Being forgotten by your own grandmother hurts. Then Tamika's father shows her Momma Lou's old scrapbooks, full of a life Tamika never knew about: Momma Lou young, Momma Lou marching for civil rights, Momma Lou in a jail cell for it. So Tamika starts bringing the photos and mementos to the home, trying to spark something. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But one day a picture of a protest reaches all the way in, and Momma Lou lifts her head and leads the whole room in 'We Shall Overcome.' It's a bright, singing moment, and even as Momma Lou slips further away afterward, Tamika has taken her grandmother's history and love into her own heart to keep.
This one is for a slightly older child, because it doesn't soften the ache. Momma Lou doesn't know Tamika, and the flashes of recognition, when they come, are rare and brief. But it hands the child the very tool families actually reach for: photographs, music, and stories to reach a person that memory has carried far away. And it carries real Black history, the civil rights movement, folded right inside the family story.