The day after her beloved Baba Bazorg dies, a little girl remembers some of her favorite things about him: his striped slippers, the mints in his pockets and the fig cookies he always shared.

Transcript

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

The end of the year is often a time for reflection - on hopes, dreams for the future. But it can also be lonely and sad, especially when our thoughts turn to loved ones who are no longer with us.

"The Sour Cherry Tree" is a new picture book that might help children and their parents to find some comfort in what's left behind. It's illustrated by Nahid Kazemi and written by Naseem Hrab.

NASEEM HRAB: "The Sour Cherry Tree" is a story about a little girl who's walking through her grandfather's house the day after he died. And she's walking through every room, remembering and seeing all her favorite parts about him - things like his favorite tea, his clothing, his bed, all her little memories of him.

SIMON: Baba Bozorg's slippers rest on the rug, Hrab writes. I put them on and shuffled to his closet. He always kept mints in his pockets. I check all his shirts and pants but only find wrappers. Little girl wanders into the living room and hides behind the curtains. This was Baba Bozorg's favorite hiding spot, she writes. I could always see her slippers peeking out, but I pretended that I couldn't.

HRAB: In Farsi, the name of her grandfather is baba bazorg, which - Nahid, you can correct me. I'm pretty sure the literal translation is, like, big father. Is that...

NAHID KAZEMI: Yeah, bazorg meaning big.

HRAB: Mmm hmm.

KAZEMI: And the baba means father.

HRAB: Mmm hmm.

KAZEMI: Yeah, meaning big father.

HRAB: So a lot of the parts of this story were based on my own memories of my grandparents. You know, my grandfather would always give me Fig Newtons, which I did not like at all. But I always took one because we didn't share a language. My maternal grandparents speak Farsi. My mom's family is from Iran. Neither spoke English very well, and I was never taught Farsi, so we had to find different ways to share our love with one another, which was usually food or plants or touch. But I guess what the little girl loves the most about her grandfather is just how he found so many other ways to express his love to her. So it didn't matter that they didn't share a language. She knew that she was loved.

SIMON: Many of the authors and illustrators that we feature in our series Picture This do not talk with each other before they work on their books, but Nahid Kazemi says it was important that she talked to Naseem Hrab to fully understand her story.

KAZEMI: I was thinking it must be Naseem's experience in childhood. And I would like, before any sketch, before any drawing, I would like to talk with the author. And so I talked with Naseem, and Naseem shared some memories, pictures. It helps me to find the deeper layer of a story.

HRAB: Yeah, I remember I sent Nahid, I think, three photos and also I had - which I still don't know what they say to this day, but a page of, like, my baba bozorg's journal. I don't know if he was complaining about my mom in that entry or not. I just remember once my mom said, oh, this is a very angry letter. But yeah, I sent, I think, two photos of me as a toddler, probably with my baba bozorg and one with my maman bozorg.

KAZEMI: It helped me a lot because I inspired the face of the girl and the character of the girl from Naseem's childhood picture. And most of the colors unconsciously came to the work. The pink, the subtle colors, I was creating the delicate universe of a girl. The other reference for the color for the - my palette was - it was a Persian home. The colors like turquoise blue, like deep yellows, like different kinds of blue - you know, the first thing that an immigrant Persian fold and put in suitcase is a piece of carpet. So all of these stuff unconsciously came to my palette and came to my drawings.

SIMON: Little girl wears a tangerine dress, vivid against the charcoaled background. The walls of the house are blush pink. The Persian rugs are soft oranges and blues. And the sour cherry tree the grandfather planted outside of his house is the brightest magenta. Kazemi used colored pencils and chalk pastels for the illustrations. A brush technique made the chalk look more like watercolors.

HRAB: What I love, too, about your artwork is that there is a source of light on every page - right? - whether it's a lamp or a window or the sunlight. There's so much light. So even though it's such a somber topic, there's humor in the book, and there's lightness in the book and so much warmth.

KAZEMI: I'm glad to hear it. I'm really glad to hear it. Talking about a subject like death is hard for kids. But this story was about something - a sad subject, but the story was very sweet. It's about solace. You know, when a loved one leaves us, we find solace even in the small subjects who belong to them. You know, for example, when my grandpa came to our house and when he leaved (ph) us, I like to go in the closet and smell the clothes, you know? It gave me a kind of security.

HRAB: It's really interesting to tackle what adults perceive as difficult topics, because I think children tend to often handle things a bit more matter-of-factly. You know, the little girl in the story doesn't quite realize that it's real yet, so she still cares, you know, kind of like, what will I be having for lunch versus her entirely understanding the weight of the situation. I'm treating it like a way to ease someone into the the subject matter but also maybe quickly remind them that the most important thing one can do when one loses a loved one is remember them and collect all of these memories of them and find a way to ensure that that collection of memories and moments doesn't get lost.

SIMON: That was Naseem Hrab, the author, and illustrator Naheed Kazemi talking about their new children's book "The Sour Cherry Tree." Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Tags: picture books  children's books  Series: Picture This