Grandfather's Story Cloth

A boy's grandfather is losing his memory to Alzheimer's, and the paj ntaub he stitched years ago becomes the thing that brings him back: panel by panel, the life in Laos, the war, the crossing, the camp. Linda Gerdner is a nursing researcher who spent her career on dementia care in Hmong families, and it shows. The book is honest about what the disease takes and never lets the grandfather become an object of pity. The English and White Hmong text sit together on the page in RPA, so a grandparent and a grandchild can read it in the same sitting, which is the whole point of the book existing. Stuart Loughridge's watercolors carry the weight without prettifying it. For elementary readers, and unusually valuable for families facing dementia who have never once seen their own language in a book about it. Pair it with Dia's Story Cloth for two very different things a textile can hold.