The Sour Cherry Tree

PreS-Gr 1–This book on grief and the passing of a grandparent perfectly encapsulates a child’s perspective. The death of Baba Bozorg happened the day before, and now a small girl and her mother go to his house to “take care of a few things.” The bed where the child often found him napping is empty, but rumpled, as if he has just left it for a moment. His tea cup is by the samovar, where he enjoyed Ceylon with a splash of rose water and a fig cookie. He always offered a cookie to the narrator; she never liked figs, but took the offering anyway. He didn’t speak much English; she spoke little Farsi. But they communicated in other ways, sharing a wink or a smile. She slips into his closet to remember. From there, she spies the sour cherry tree in his front yard, which he planted when the girl’s mother was her own age. “Whenever we left Baba Bozorg’s house, he would wave at us until I couldn’t see him anymore.” That’s the last line of the book, as wistful as the casual mention that Baba Bozorg was a published poet in Iran, with an illustration of him in a book of his writings. Kazemi’s soft pictures have a diffused quality; this is the past, this is the present, it doesn’t matter.