Veronica and Grandpa Coconut
366 stories for every day
Award:
- The book received the Golden Ribbon for best children's literature.
- It was selected for the IBBY Honour List
Rights sold:
The book was published in France in 2004, in Bulgaria in 2008 and in Japan in 2015.
The funny adventures of a girl with the strangest grandfather in the world. A magic realist story
Six-year-old Veronika lives in a perfectly ordinary family – with her parents and Grandma Agatha, who loves to spoil Veronika and her best friend Lukas with delicious cakes. There is nothing that Veronika misses – apart from a grandpa. And believe it or not, on Christmas Day, a package containing the strangest and most amusing grandfather in the world arrives all the way from Haiti.
The funny grandpa looks like a coconut that can speak and walk. And Veronika has to hide the strange being from other family members. But she doesn’t do it quite well enough, because the restless coconut grandpa always wants to be there when something is going on. Veronika smuggles him on her skiing vacation in her backpack. Disguised as a snack, he flies with her to London for the summer holidays. Wherever he appears, he always gets up to something and causes excitement. Also at home, especially when strict Aunt Ursula comes to visit the family. Or when Lukas comes with his guinea pig.
In the end, however, Grandma Agatha rediscovers the great love of her youth – a sailor who left her to sail around the world, all the way to Haiti. From now on Veronika has a real grandpa. And the coconut one is gone. Maybe she just made him up, maybe not, who knows.