By Cynthia Rylant
A whole carload of relatives drives up from Virginia, packs the house for weeks of hugging and eating and sleeping in a pile, and then drives home again — leaving the rooms much too quiet.
It starts before dawn, in a station wagon packed with people and grapes for the trip. The relatives are coming, and they drive all day, up out of Virginia and through the mountains, until they arrive in the dark and everybody hugs everybody for hours. Then they simply stay. There are too many people for the beds, so they sleep all over the floor, breathing all night in the same room. There are too many people for the table, so they eat in shifts. The relatives fix things that were broken and pull weeds in the garden and play music on the porch, and the whole house is crowded and loud and warm for weeks. And then one morning they pack the station wagon and drive back to Virginia. The beds feel too big. The house is quiet. Everyone thinks about next summer.
Most of the books you'll set beside this one are a grown-up telling a child I love you. This is the one that shows what the loving looks like from down at the grandchild's height — the arrival in the dark, the pile of arms on the floor, the noise, and then the strange flat quiet after the cars pull out. That's the relationship as a child lives it, in visits. Stephen Gammell's colored pencil packs every page with more people than it can hold, and that overflow is the whole feeling. The ending doesn't rush the goodbye either; it lets the house go too quiet before it turns toward next summer.