The Sour Cherry Tree

Naseem Hrab’s The Sour Cherry Tree is a lovely addition to the canon of children’s picture books that deal with the death of a grandparent. In this one, a girl reminisces about her Baba Bozorg who “forgot to wake up yesterday”. The girl and her mom go to the grandfather’s house to “take care of a few things”. The girl finds and puts on her grandfather’s slippers and wanders the rooms of his house remembering. She sees her Baba’s smudged glasses and his samovar, and she remembers his long eyebrows and how he kept mints in his pockets. It is these small wonderful details that bring his memory to life both for the girl and for the reader.

The mood of the book is subdued, but not depressing. Along with the girl’s happy memories, there are moments of silliness: the girl wakes her mother up by biting her toe, the girl kisses her pancake when she discovers it looks like her Baba; the girl finds her grandfather’s favourite hiding place, presumably used when the two played together. These memories add lightness to the narrative and prevent it from getting too bogged down in melancholy.

The illustrations by Nahid Kazemi are soft and muted and primarily in shades of black, white, grey, and red. The pictures are chalky and have a diffused quality that evokes the past. While the titular tree does not feature prominently, the pops of red are reminders of it throughout. The sour cherry is common in Persian cuisine and this and other nods to the family’s culture add originality to this familiar narrative.

The Sour Cherry Tree ends with the girl and her mother outside the house under the sour cherry tree that was planted when the mom was a girl. It is at this tree that they had watched Baba Bozorg wave after their visits, and they stand under the tree, the girl clutching the slippers, and wave at the empty house. It is a fitting and lovely ending as the mother and daughter say goodbye to both Baba Bozorg and the reader.