Every Wrinkle Has a Story

Gr 2-4–Yotam, a kindergartner boy, asks his grandfather Amnon about his wrinkles. “Some of my wrinkles are from getting old,” Grandpa says. “And some of them are from all kinds of things that happened to me in life. Happy things and sad things.” Grandpa continues to tell Yotam about his wrinkles, the happiest being the wrinkle from the day Yotam was born. Grossman’s (A Horse Walks Into a Bar) text is poetic and will resonate beautifully with the already-wrinkled, but will children find it compelling? Ninamasina’s watercolor illustrations are done exclusively in blue hues until they burst out in joyous colors on the final spread. Yotam and Grandpa are shown in silhouette except for a fuller picture of Yotam on the last page and a rendering of Grandpa by just the lines on his face without an outline of head or body. The entire book has a feeling of calm, peace, and loving acceptance and ends on a loving, entirely lyrical note: “Grandpa Amnon sits looking at his grandson and smiling to himself, and his wrinkles smile with him.”