HE’S KIND, HE makes eye contact, he has the same bushy brows and white beard. How could he not be my Pop-Pop? So reasons Brian, a little boy on his daily adventures with his mum to the local library. It’s a can of ‘yucky beans’ that make Brian think and ponder his own assumptions, however. This is the premise to Not Pop-Pop, a beautiful children’s book suitable for young people aged between 3 and 7, written by New Jersey-based writer, Angela de Groot and illustrated by MacKenzie Haley.

Like any other children’s story worth its salt, the piece has a moral, but this one flies in the face of conventional platitudes and throws a delicious curve ball at the vagaries of homelessness and the wealth that libraries have to offer. It’s a book of sounds and turtles, of the spectacular nature of the Northern Lights and knitting nanas that your little one will take with them in their heart as they grow up.

So Brian encounters a man who looks like his grandpa but, like Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty and his explanation of the value of celebrating of unbirthdays, deems the man ‘Not Pop-Pop’. This has to do with tooth brushing in public bathrooms and socks that are not all that clean and other habits that distinguish this bloke who frequents the library from Brian’s own Pop-Pop.

It’s a tale about how grown-ups look away from situations out of their frameworks, but how children remain wide-eyed and curious and ask the right questions, even if they make people a little surprised and uncomfortable. Containing words and idioms that keep Brian up at night, like the idea of walking in someone else’s sneakers or the concept of empath and how calling someone a bum is very very rude indeed, the story itself doesn’t speak down to the presence of a small boy in the face of a great social issue.

Illustrated with a delicate simplicity and engaging brightness that will make your little one want to snuggle up close to you, the pictures and the story all at the same time, this is an important and lovely book that tells a deep and complex tale of empathy in the right words for a young reader.

• Not Pop-Pop is written by Angela de Groot and illustrated by MacKenzie Haley and is published by Waterbrook, Random House (2024). It is available through Amazon.