Hanging out with grandad turns out to be anything but boring…. Readers will roll up for repeats, and not just because of the name on the cover. —Kirkus 

“This picture book debut from the musical icon hits all the right notes in the tale of a cool grandfather, his magical compass, and his grandchildren." —Publishers Weekly

"McCartney does a fine job of upping the ante at each stop... the diverse group of chillers dash, crash, scurry, worry, and laugh about the magical events. In the end, it's golden slumbers, but the promise of future adventures is in the air.” — Booklist
 

2019-09-18
Hanging out with grandad turns out to be anything but boring after he pulls out a very special compass and takes everyone on a magical mystery tour.

A "gray and drizzly" day takes a series of exciting turns for Lucy, Tom, Em, and Bob—a racially diverse quartet of sibs (or maybe cousins) in Durst's fluid, informal cartoon scenes—after grizzled Grandude strides into the room. He has a compass that transports him and the "Chillers" with a "zing, bang, sizzle" to a beach, a desert, and a Swiss mountainside. Like the economical text, which aside from a quick refrain is all in prose, experiences at each stop take on a certain pattern as the children thrice enjoy their new setting but then need a quick spin of the compass to escape a flood of pinchy red crabs, mount horses but narrowly avoid a bison stampede, then abandon a picnic to clamber atop an obliging flying cow when an avalanche threatens. Despite the allusive title (and the "Grandude" moniker, which McCartney admits he cribbed from his own grandkids) there's no sign of the self-absorption that often rides celebrity picture books. Ultimately, the genial tour guide, who is white but otherwise looks nothing like the author and even plays guitar right-handed, spins the compass one final time to deliver the weary Chillers back home.

Readers will roll up for repeats, and not just because of the name on the cover. (Picture book. 5-8)