Grandfather Counts

Review
By CCBC

(Cooperative Children’s Book Council) Helen has to adjust to changes in her household when Gong Gong, her grandfather from China, comes to live with her family. Gong Gong can’t speak any English, nor can Helen speak Chinese. So it’s difficult for them to communicate. Worse, she has had to give up her back bedroom, so she can no longer watch the passing trains from her window. But Helen soon learns that Gong Gong is also a train watcher, and the two find they can enjoy counting the cars together, in both English and Chinese. Several Chinese words, including the numbers one to eight, are naturally incorporated into this moving story of a bicultural, biracial family.