KidLit Forum

"Gangsta Granny" is a funny and attractive story. I want to mention that this Granny is not boring. She has her secrets. Although Ben is forced to stay with his Granny every Friday because his parents think they have artistic skills he discovers that his Granny is the most interesting and funny person that he knows. The cabbage soup and dishes disgusts him, but when he finds out that there should be also chocolate biscuits he discovers "Pandora's box", a box full of jeweleries. So he became curious and started to follow his granny. He uses a tickery to hide his escapes by his parents, he tells them that he likes to dance, so he is registered to a dance class and competition. This idea is not attractive for his, but was the perfect lie in order to not be discovered by his parents that he escapes of the house to follow his granny. Surprise, Ben catches his granny on the hop of a robebbery. So he blackmails his grandmother to tell him the story of the jeweleries and why she was doing this. She behaves like a maggie, so she could not stop by robbery. Ben is attracted by his grandmother "passion". Ben has with a "sparkle" idea. To pick the most expensive jewelerie, that means the Queen Crown. So he makes a detailed, visual plan to enter in the crown possesion. He convince his grand mother to apply this plan as being the biggest robbery before she get retired. Even the fact that granny becomes ill and she is in hospital do not stop them by following the plan. Ben helps his granny to run fron the hospital. They dress up as black cats and get in action. It is amusing to have this kind of granny. "Gangsta Granny" shows us not to misunderstand our grannies because they might have special powers and passions. The life is colored and sparkle but we should discover it.

Ben was found a partner for the ballroom dancing, but he never went to the rehearsals...he said to be too prepared for the competition to have anything to rehearse. Only at the ballroom he admitted he never danced before. The dance he sketched was so funny that Flavio fainted and his mother panicked and resuscitated him, the perfect excuse to be close to him and kiss him...

Later, when he and his granny arrived at the Buckingham Palace and the Queen caught them, granny explained her that she invented the story with the Black Cat because she was boring for her grandson. The Queen felt sorry for her and said she understands her, because she feels the same with her grandchildren. At the end of the story the whole family saw the Queen on TV,holding a speech and mentioning the people she met recently. She also talked about the way young people should behave with the elder ones, dancing in the end of the interview exactly as Ben did at the dancing show.

Gangsta Granny offers a life lesson for teenagers who forget that they will be old one day. Ageism is the key word for this book. We can observe the discriminatory attitude Ben has regarding his grandmother. He just hates Fridays. He doesn't like spending that days with the elder woman because her schedule is a routine. She prepares cabbage food and plays scrabble all day long. For a young child as Ben who is looking for adventure and funny games his grandmother is boring. I can say that he has a discriminatory attitude. Even his parents avoid this elder woman. Ben's father assures that Ben would not run, and till they arrive at granny's house he locks child protect button. To fight against the discriminatory attitude the grandmother invents stories calling herself a famous thief entitled 'Black Cat'. The final of the book brings the adventurous pursuit for the English Crown. Ben and granny meet the Queen of England in their attempt to steal the Crown and the two elder women understand each other perfectly. It seems that Queen's nephews at their turn, consider her boring. The idea is that young people should not forget that one day they will switch places the elders of the families. Each time from life has its' purpose and utility. It is normal that at the age of 65-70 years old you don't have the same energy and mood to play.
Maybe some of us will change our personality and became cranky.The elders should not be judged for the way they act. We'll be elders some day.

There is a special connection between Ben and his grandmother. And I think that granny's secret brings them together. I could say that between Ben and his parents there is no special connection. They do not care about Ben so much. They only care about dancing and watching tv. They are very disapointed that their son does not like to dance. I liked this book very much. At the beginning it was a little boring but after we found out about granny's past, the action from the book became much more interesting and captivating.

This book proves that older people are not so boring as we think and this is also proved nowadays by many ”grannies” which are jumping with parachutes, running marathons etc. And we must admit that we need their advice and life experience!

This is a very funny story, because we can see the difference between Ben's opinion about Granny, when the story begins and his very different opinion, after all this great action with this special Granny.This story teaches us a lesson, the lesson is that sometimes we judje people wrong,especially our grandparents, because we think that they are old and can't be funny anymore,but this story proves us, that, sometimes, if we will have enough patience to know them better and spend time with them, maybe, who knows, we will discover that they are so funny and special persons and I am sure that they can teach us so many useful things.OLD# BORING, we see all the time so many cases of young and boring people ( just like Ben's parents).

The illustrations in the book (made by Tony Ross) are very funny but also very useful as they help us for example to outline easily granny's profile. In the first chapter there is an illustration with granny in which we can see, among other things: what she is wearing (the floral print dress and the mauve cardigan), where she keeps her packet of Murray Mints or (and that's the funny part) we can see from where does the smell of cabbage come.

Another funny illustration can be found in chapter four. Here, the author intervenes in the story by giving the readers a tip on "brushing the teeth" (better said - avoiding to brush teeth) in six easy steps.