Oma's Bag is a gentle and moving picture book that introduces children to the subject of Alzheimer's, especially if it affects their parents or grandparents. Michelle Wang is an elementary school teacher in Toronto who wrote the book based on her own experience with her mother-in-law; her entire family are characters in the book, including her five children. What we liked about this book is how gentle it is in introducing such a potentially difficult subject to children. In the book, the family uses the fact that the grandmother (Oma) has been putting things from around the house in her oversize shopping bag as a segue to get Oma to talk about her memories of the past. Even though grandfather (Opa) wistfully says, "I feel that she's slipping away," he is reassured by his grandson Jeffrey when he says, "But she's still here," meaning that we should enjoy the present and not fear the future. The book ends with the entire family, including Oma and Opa, dancing. We also liked this book for the fact that it is a culturally diverse representation of the Alzheimer's experience. Michelle and her family are Chinese Canadian (her husband/the children's father, and the grandparents, are Chinese from Indonesia where they use the Dutch terms of Oma and Opa).
Age range is 3 to 8. The book will include a page of resources for parents to consult on how to talk about Alzheimer's and dementia with their children. (You may know that even though many use the terms interchangeably, they are not exactly the same thing; dementia is a general term used to describe a decline in cognitive abilities, and Alzheimer's is a specific type of dementia characterized by changes in the brain.) According to the Alzheimer's Association, an estimated 6.7 million Americans age 65 and older, or 1 in 9 persons in that age bracket, are living with Alzheimer's in 2023. Michelle self-published a series of 3 children's picture books about the seasons: It Must Be Fall, It Must Be Winter, and It Must Be Spring. They are still in print and available on Amazon but we haven't included these as comps since they weren't traditionally published.