In our big, bustling hometown in southwest China,
On the top floor of an apartment tower, lives an old grandma.
A weather-worn apron covers her cornflower blue blouse,
And she putters about town, lugging her little cart around.

In Grandma’s Roof Garden, a delightful, heartwarming picture book for ages 4-8, we meet an eccentric, energetic grandmother. With enviable agility and dexterity, she climbs “a ladder to her garden in the sky.” There she grows veggies for her neighbors and family, crowing over her “gorgeous, chubby veggie children” and cooking delectable meals for all who stop by. No retired couch potato, Granny ignores the perfect produce at the market. Instead, she seeks out bruised, distressed items, feeding some of it to her rooftop “barnyard” of chickens and geese and composting the rest.

Vivid pencil drawings make the illustrations pop off the page and the poetic, periodically rhyming text creates a delicious, anthropomorphic ode to urban farming:

Eggplants hide their face—they’re quite shy.
Chilis are hot-tempered, and quarrel all the time.
Cucumbers do the tango while wearing golden crowns.
Stem lettuce can twirl and swirl in their frilly gowns.

In the backmatter, the author writes that the character of Granny was inspired by an elderly relative whose rooftop garden began as a retirement project. Readers young and not so young will readily relate to Granny—both those who have or have had a quirky, loving grandmother and those who fervently wish they did.

Grandma’s Roof Garden
Written and illustrated by Tang Wei
Translated from the Chinese by Kelly Zhang
ISBN: 9781646147014
2024, Levine Querido

Reviews: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus

You can buy a copy here* or find it at a library.

*Book purchases made via our affiliate link may earn GLLI a small commission at no cost to you.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 100 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the much-loved Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year (nominated for the 2023 Eisner and Harvey Awards) and Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War (2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, 2023 Mosaic Prize winner, 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist and 2023 Harvey Award nominee). Accolades have also gone to her translations of Magical History Tour: Vikings and of Magical History Tour: Gandhi (both 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists), Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Award; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018).