Alte Zachen / Old Things

A beautifully illustrated and presented intergenerational graphic novel that follows eleven-year-old Benji and his elderly grandmother, Bubbe Rosa, as they traverse Brooklyn and Manhattan, gathering the ingredients for a Friday night dinner. Bubbe3s relationship with the city is complexCnothing is quite as she remembered it, and she feels alienated and angry at the world around her. Benji, on the other hand, looks at the world, and his grandmother, with clear-eyed acceptance. As they wander the city, we catch glimpses of Bubbe3s childhood in Germany, her young adulthood in 1950s Brooklyn, and her relationships; first with a baker called Gershon, and later with successful Joe, Benji3s grandfather. This is a powerful, affecting, and deceptively simple story of Jewish identity, of generational divides, of the surmountability of difference, and of a restless city and its inhabitants.