What To Do With Grandad's Body

When Grandad tells young Tom that his old body is running out of time, the two of them cook up the most wonderfully silly plans for what to do with it, until laughter carries them both through the hardest of conversations.

Tom's mum says Grandad is very ill, and that Tom must go to see him soon. Tom, being Tom, announces that Grandad will live forever, because he is a superhero and that is simply not allowed. But when the two of them are together, Grandad gently tells him the truth: his body is old, his soul is brand new, and when the time comes, he will always stay with Tom in his heart. What follows is something rare in children's books about loss: a conversation that moves between heartbreak and hilarity without flinching from either. Tom wants to know what they will do with Grandad's body when it finally dies, and between them they come up with an increasingly spectacular set of proposals, from shooting it into space in a rocket ship to entering it in the Sleeping Lions World Cup. The laughter, as it always does in the best of relationships, makes the grief bearable. Written in rhyming verse by Joe Zalias, with illustrations that have the loose, joyful energy of a child's own drawings brought to life, this is a picture book that gives children and adults the words for the conversations nobody knows how to start. It ends not with sadness, but with love that carries on. For readers aged 4 onwards, and for any adult reading aloud with tears running down their face.