''Hey Grandude!'' is a

picture book A picture book combines visual and verbal narratives in a book format, most often aimed at young children. With the narrative told primarily through text, they are distinct from comics, which do so primarily through sequential images. The images ...

for children written by

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...

and illustrated by

Kathryn Durst Kathryn Durst is a Canadian artist and illustrator based in Toronto, Ontario.Puffin Books Puffin Books is a longstanding children's imprint of the British publishers Penguin Books. Since the 1960s, it has been among the largest publishers of children's books in the UK and much of the English-speaking world. The imprint now belongs t ...

, an imprint of

Penguin Random House Penguin Random House LLC is an Anglo-American multinational corporation, multinational conglomerate (company), conglomerate publishing company formed on July 1, 2013, from the merger of Penguin Group and Random House. On April 2, 2020, Bertels ...

, in September 2019. An audio version of the book with an instrumental soundtrack was also released. McCartney has eight grandchildren. McCartney said in an interview with the BBC that the title of the book came from one of his grandchildren who "...used to call me 'Grandad' - just happened one day to say 'Grandude' and it kind of stuck...So the other kids started calling me 'Grandude'". The title is also a reference to McCartney's 1968 song "

Hey Jude "Hey Jude" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles that was released as a non-album single in August 1968. It was written by Paul McCartney and credited to the Lennon–McCartney partnership. The single was the Beatles' first release o ...

". McCartney started making up stories about Grandude, who he conceived of "as a kind of retired hippie having adventures with his grandchildren". McCartney said in an interview with the BBC that "I imagined him as a sort of eccentric old guy. He's got a grey beard, a little bit of a ponytail, so he's a little bit groovy. He has a little hat and a bow tie. And he has this magic compass so when he rubs that you can go anywhere". McCartney has stressed that Grandude is not based on him. A sequel, ''Grandude's Green Submarine'', was released in September 2021.

Plot

The book is about a grandpa and his four grandchildren with a magic compass on an adventure. The group "ride horses with a cowboy in the desert, face an army of crabs on a tropical beach and dodge an avalanche while having a picnic up a mountain".

Critical reception

Reviewing the book in ''The Guardian'',

Kitty Empire Kitty Empire is the pen name of a British writer and music critic, currently writing for ''The Observer''. Early life Empire says that she was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1970 and brought up in Canada, Italy and Egypt before arriving in Britai ...

wrote that the reader would "struggle to detect the imprimatur of one of the 20th-century's creative greats here" feeling that as with other celebrity writers of children's books, "The famous seem to miss the fact that intelligence is not wasted on the young" and contrasts ''Hey Grandude!s plot with the "phenomenally sophisticated" 'con trick' that the mouse plays on the Gruffalo in

Julia Donaldson Julia Donaldson (born Julia Catherine Shields; born ) is an English writer and playwright, and the 2011–2013 Children's Laureate. She is best known for her popular rhyming stories for children, especially those illustrated by Axel Scheffler, ...

's eponymous picture book. Empire concludes by writing that there is an "all-round risk-averseness here that's puzzling. The book concludes with everyone safely tucked up in bed...But every gleeful scenario ends badly, with Grandude and the chillers fleeing when some avalanche or stampede invariably kiboshes the thrills. Why didn't an editor ask McCartney to take this sad song and make it better?" '' The Sun'' wrote that it was a "charming tale from the music legend - with the most glorious illustrations that will be enjoyed by old and young" and ''

OK Magazine ''OK!'' is a British weekly magazine that primarily specialises in royal and celebrity news. Originally launched as a monthly magazine, its first issue was published in April 1997. In September 2004, ''OK''! launched in Australia as a monthly ...

'' wrote that "it's sure to take pride of place on any little one's bookshelf".

References

External links

* {{Paul McCartney 2019 children's books British picture books Books by Paul McCartney Puffin Books books