So Far Away! Grandpa Across The Ocean by Hyewon Yum

MY GRANDPA LIVES ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE OCEAN.

Crossing an ocean takes a long flight, over a whole ocean to get there, where everything is strange. Grandpa's food smells strange and tastes stranger. HE bows instead of saying "Hi!"

GRANDPA'S HOUSE IS THE MOST BORING PLACE ON EARTH.

And he naps a lot in his chair in front of the television set, too, except when he watches some very important news, but not cartoons. There are no toys except for one big ball, which the boy plays with only a little while before he kicks it into a very big vase with an important flower growing inside. It breaks, of course.

BUT GRANDPA IS NOT MAD.

In fact, the boy finds that he and Grandpa like a lot of the same things--fresh peaches, his red toy mini-car. watching the same cartoons together-- and chocolate ice cream cones. He even likes playing and swimming at the beach, in the same ocean that the boy flew over to get to Grandpa's house.

I GET TIRED, BUT GRANDPA DOESN'T SEEM TO.

HE'S A TROUBLEMAKER, JUST LIKE ME!

And now Grandpa's food tastes good! (Even kimchi!)

I WISH SUMMER WOULD GO ON FOREVER.

"Blood is thicker than water" the old proverb says, and the boy and grandpa discover they have a lot of things in common. After all, they're related, in Hyewon Yum's latest, Grandpa Across the Ocean (Abrams Books, 2021). In artist Yum's charming illustrations, the age gap, like the ocean between them, changes when boy and grandfather get together and discover how many things they have in common.

Yum's engaging mixed media illustrations tell the story equally with the text in this heartwarming intergenerational story," says School Library Journal's starred review.