Down The Memory Hole

Down the Memory Hole by Bonnie Turner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When my grandmother begin to do weird things, the family thought she was being deliberately difficult. She argued with the neighbor over a parking spot, when cleaning her house we found money squirreled around the house, and one Thanksgiving she put a damp towel in the oven to catch the turkey drippings.

Trying to explain this to the kids was difficult. There were some books about Alzheimer's disease, but nothing that captured the emotion that Bonnie Turner does in the book Down the Memory Hole.

When his grandfather can no longer care for himself, Buzz finds himself saddled with his grandfather as his new roommate. Buzz resists at first because when his grandfather slips into the "Alzheimer Car", he confuses Buzz for his dead brother Barkley. Buzz decides to use this to see if he can help his grandfather get better.

The book accurately shows the frustration caretakers have when dealing with a person who is slipping away before your eyes. The grandfather rebels by throwing his teeth away and refusing to wear a diaper. Reading this book was like spending a day with my own grandmother.

This short story is a great way to introduce middle school readers to this complex disease.

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