Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List (available here) is a great big soaring adventure about family and finding happiness. Read on for a review of Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List and a guest post from author Jenny Pearson about her bookish bucket list of places to travel …
Review
Book Title: Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List (available here)
Author: Jenny Pearson
Publisher: Usborne
Publication Date: 3rd Feb 2022
Most Suitable for: Upper KS2
Reviewed by: Louise Buisson
Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List takes the reader on a journey of excitement, adventure, humour and discovery and leaves them understanding life just a little bit more.
Frank sets off to meet his grandpa with high expectations. What he finds is a very sad and lonely old man living in a nursing home who has no interest in establishing any kind of relationship. Not wanting to give up on his chance for happiness (and because Davenport men don’t quit), Frank comes up with the idea of a bucket list of activities to inject some joy back into Grandpa Frank’s life, secretly harbouring hopes of a grand family reunion somewhere along the line. Soon, Grandpa Frank finds himself participating in a whole array of activities most OAPs wouldn’t be expected to do. As they venture together through: hot air ballooning; parkour; synchronised swimming and monster truck driving, Grandpa Frank learns that maybe there are more opportunities for joy (and bruises) in life.
Despite the blossoming relationship with his grandfather, it seems that Frank’s dream of a family reunion will never happen. However, after the middle Frank steps a little further over the line than usual, it will take all of Frank Senior Senior and Frank Junior Junior’s newly-learned skills to save the day.
Alongside the humour in this story, there are many opportunities for the reader to see through societal stereotypes of older people and also begin to understand the impact of dementia.
This book also features as one of our February 2022 Books of the Month.
You can order Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List from Amazon or Bookshop.Org.
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Guest Post
by Jenny Pearson, author of Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List
My Bookish Bucket list of Places I’d Like to Travel
I think travelling to new places is something on most people’s list of things they’d like to do, it is certainly on mine. While Grandpa Frank has his hopes set on settling down on the Costa de Sol, his Bucket List adventure doesn’t stretch far beyond South East London! I’ve come up with a list of locations that I would most like to travel to that I have, so far, only been able to read about in books.
To organise this adventure, I’d first have to pop into the Strange Worlds Travel Agency (by L D Lapinski) to ask Jonathan if they could sort me out with a few suitcases to send me on my way.
1. The Island in Noah’s Gold by Frank Cottrell-Boyce – I rather like the idea of an uninhabited island with no internet. I love the thought of camping out in an abandoned house and spending my days exploring and taking in the wildlife. I wouldn’t mind having a go at riding on the back of a basking shark like Noah too.
2. The Amazon Jungle in The Explorer by Katherine Rundell – From one island to a very different one, although I am very pleased I will be travelling via one of Jonathan’s suitcases than ending up there after a plane crash! Trekking through the Amazon, which Rundell describes so breathtakingly, is something I’d very much like to do. River dolphins, tamarin, capybaras, giant anteaters, kinkajous, jaguar – there would be so much to see. Who knows? Maybe like the adventurers in The Explorer, I might even get a cuddle with a baby sloth!
3. Bear Island in The Last Bear by Hannah Gold – I imagine it will take a little while to get used to the drop in temperature, but my next stop would be Bear Island, which lies on the boundary between the polar region and the Atlantic. This is another uninhabited place that Gold brings to the page so vividly. Again, it is the wildlife that is a draw for me, from flocks of kittiwakes and guillemots to walruses and maybe even, as April discovered, a polar bear.
4. The Valley of the Kings from Secrets of a Sun King by Emma Carroll – Next, I’d be jumping in my suitcase and heading off for a stay at the very luxurious Winter Palace Hotel that Lilian and Tulip stay at on their adventure. The Egyptians have always fascinated me and I would love to be able to explore the Valley of the Kings and take a peek in Tutankhamun’s tomb. Having read about the curse in the Sun King, I definitely won’t be taking anything home with me that I shouldn’t!
5. The Catacombs from The Unexpected Tale of Bastien Bonlivre by Clare Povey – I love France and I have been to Paris a few times, but as yet, I have not managed to explore the Catacombs that lie under the city. The idea of a whole other world of the dead a few feet below the surface is dreadfully delightful! I scare easily so I don’t know how I’d handle it. At least I would not have to deal with being chased by the awful Monsieur Xavier!
Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List by Jenny Pearson, illustrated by David O’Connell is out in paperback on Thursday 3 February 2022 from Usborne.
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You can order Grandpa Frank’s Great Big Bucket List from Amazon or Bookshop.Org.
Many thanks to the publishers for sending us a review copy and to Jenny for providing the guest post. For more about the book, visit the other stops on the blog tour.
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Where next?
> Visit our Reading for Pleasure Hub
> Browse our Topic Booklists
> View our year group booklists.
> See our Books of the Month.
