Review: Nana the Great Comes to Visit

Nana the Great Comes to Visit

Written by Lisa Tawn Bergren, illustrated by David Hohn (WaterBrook)

In this new release, author of the God Gave Us series Lisa Tawn Bergren and award-winning illustrator David Hohn team to create an engaging nod to grandmothers everywhere. In the story, a lively girl lets slip what happens when Nana the Great Comes to Visit her and her not-so-great little brother.

Her Nana builds the best forts but “never lets me win” at checkers, so someday I’ll beat her “fair and square,” the girl says. She “hates poopy diapers” because she’s already changed 10,453 and “can’t face one more.” Nana sugars tomatoes, sneaks cookies before dinner and allows trying on makeup. She uses “twenty different bottles of polish” on fingers and toes and lets “me make my own choice” when it comes to clothes. Nana’s great at “ginormous” hopscotch games, playing in sprinklers and urging climbing high in the sky.

She shows me how to talk to God “any way you wish”—kneeling or standing with eyes closed or staring at stars. Her favorite way is dancing, “praising him for everything and everyone.” She adds bubbles to baths and stashes adventures under her bed. When Nana leaves “I start to feel sad” until she assures that “while we’re apart … my heart is always with you.”

Although available as an audiobook, don’t miss the hardback’s bright, emotion and motion filled pages. Girls and boys will love the story and pictures. Adults will chuckle at mom’s peeks around doors and dad’s furtive backward glances because Nana’s a little bit naughty “in the best sort of way.” Bergren’s and Hohn’s Nana the Great Comes to Visit is a keeper or makes a great gift for a precious child or special “Nana the Great.”

Kathy Robinson Hillman, former president

Texas WMU and Baptist General Convention of Texas

Waco