The Sour Cherry Tree

The sadness in this story about a grandfather’s death is tempered by the offbeat voice of his granddaughter, who narrates in closely observed prose. Kazemi (The Old Woman) draws her with pale skin, straight black hair, and sharply defined black eyebrows. “I bit my mom on the toe this morning,” writes Hrab (Weekend Dad) in a startling opening: “My baba bozorg forgot to wake up yesterday. He lived alone,” the child explains, “so no one was there to bite him. I really wish I’d been there.” Fragmented thoughts build up a portrait of a beloved grandfather who kept mints in his pockets, liked fig cookies, and “spoke Farsi loudly but English quietly.” Facts (“Baba Bozorg was a poet in Iran”) mingle with childlike observation as the granddaughter remembers the way he spoke Farsi to her mother, and the way he winked at her when she caught her own name in the flow of conversation. The sour cherry tree of the title was his (“I was your age when he planted it,” the girl’s mother tells her), and rose hues throughout connect the family’s past to a present filled with farewell. Ages 4–8. (Oct.)