Grandad's Camper: A picture book for children that celebrates LGBTQIA+ families

Product Information

Inspired by these tales, the narrator encourages Grandad to fix up the van, and the two take it for a road trip to the beach. This debut picture book from award-winning author-illustrator Harry Woodgate won the British Book Awards Nibbie for Children's Illustrated Book of the Year and the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, was shortlisted for the Polari Prize, and named as an ALA Stonewall Honor Book. I've worked with publishers including Penguin Random House, Little Tiger Group, Andersen Press, Little Bee Books and HarperCollins, and also on freelance projects with clients such as the Sunday Times, The Washington Post and Google.

Still, there is a wholesome gentility to every page, of enjoying every minute, even in memory, of growing sweet cherries in the garden, and of filling a home with mementos and stories. I purchased this book for my ten year old girls who have outgrown picture books a bit but the stunning illustrations inspired them as little artist and they absolutely loved the story an the characters.As they look through photo albums, he talks fondly about how they travelled the world together in their beloved pink campervan. They will then send a postcard home from Grandad and Gramps on their beach adventure before planning, drafting and editing a sequel for the book where Grandad and the little girl head off on their own campervan adventure. The story is really lovely and delicately handles the issue of death and also helped me to discuss different family set ups with my daughter in a fun and age appropriate way. This picture book, in which a girl helps her grandfather embrace life again following the death of Gramps, may well aid young readers in understanding others' grief. So, their amazing granddaughter comes up with a clever plan to fix up the old camper and get Grandad excited to explore again.

It's so important that little ones grow up and see their type of family set-up reflected in the books you share with them. The illustrations are full of warmth, colour and joy, beautifully echoing the excitement of discovery and adventure. Immediately on opening the book you are greeted with the most breathtaking bucolic scene across the endpapers as Grandad and Gramps drive rambling hills in their pink camper van. Discover a wonderful grandfather-granddaughter relationship, as a little girl hatches the perfect plan to get her Grandad adventuring again. The artwork is enticing and rich, and readers will be happy to pore over the pages studying details like Grandad's friendly dog and the textured backgrounds as they read and reread the story.

I love that Grandad wears a t-shirt reclaiming the pink triangle in the 1970s, and I love that children will see the story of gay grandads and know families come in all different shapes and sizes. Spelling Seeds have been designed to complement Writing Roots by providing weekly, contextualised sequences of sessions for the teaching of spelling that include open-ended investigations and opportunities to practise and apply within meaningful and purposeful contexts, linked (where relevant) to other areas of the curriculum and a suggestion of how to extend the investigation into home learning. Woodgate's explosively colorful scenes center most of the book on the men, with snapshot after snapshot of their loving life together.

That child is inspired to help Grandad dust off the old camper/bus in the garage, give it a new blue stripe, change a tire, and start out for new adventures. Following this, children create expanded noun phrases to enhance their descriptive writing and use these to support them in writing poetry about an object which holds a special memory to them. Before they were Grandad and Gramps, two young men, waving a rainbow flag from their pink VW bus, were a romantic couple, traveling the world-or at least Europe-together, camping under the stars.

The depiction of a loving, same-sex relationship between Grandad and Gramps, as well as the different ethnicities of the main characters, ensure this wonderfully inclusive book reflects a range of experiences, representative of today’s society. That leaves the child's role (and there is no mention of parents, or even that Grandad and Gramps had children) as brackets to the piece, only becoming an active part of the story at the end. Grandad, white, and now balding, recounts their adventures to his young grandchild who hangs on every word. It’s refreshing to see diversity and inclusion without it being the main reference of the story - as it should be!