By Eve Bunting
A boy visits his grandmother in a nursing home after she breaks her hip, and the family works past its cheerful act to be honest about how hard it is.
Timmie and his parents drive out to Sunshine Home to visit Gram, who broke her hip and now needs more care than they can give her at home. Everyone is determinedly cheerful. The hallways smell strange, some of the other residents unsettle Timmie, and still the family keeps smiling and saying how nice it all is. Then Gram, alone with Timmie for a moment, breaks down and tells him how much she hates it and misses home. Out in the hall, his mother is crying too. It's Timmie who finally says it out loud, that it's better when you tell. After that the family stops pretending and starts being honest with each other about how hard this is.
I'd reach for this for a child who's visiting a grandparent in a nursing home or assisted living, especially if what's throwing them isn't so much the place as all the grown-ups insisting everything's lovely when it clearly isn't. The book names that gap and takes the child's side. It says the sadness is real, that everyone in the room feels it, and that letting it out helps more than swallowing it. And it's a small boy who leads the adults there, which a worried child may find steadying.