A Century for Caroline

A great grandma imparts the wisdom gained over her one hundred years to an eager little girl in this tender picture book tribute to family and living a long, purposeful, beautiful life, perfect for fans of When Grandma Gives You a Lemon Tree.

Baby girl Jasmine heads south with her dad to join the family in celebrating Great Grandma Caroline’s 100th birthday. Jasmine knows one hundred years is a very long time. It’s longer than a goldfish lives, or a hamster—or even a dog! When she gets to Great Grandma Caroline’s house, she asks: how did she get to be so old?

According to Caroline, living such a long, hearty life takes a heap of patience, a dollop of determination, and a whole lot of faith—just like learning to skip stones on the lake. And the most important thing is surrounding yourself with family and those who love you.

Born and raised in East Orange, New Jersey, Kaija Langley has been writing since she fell in love with words at age seven. She knew she was onto something when she wrote her first poem and her grade school classmates thought she’d copied it from a book! A proud alumna of Morgan State University, a historically black college and university in Baltimore, Maryland, she received her MFA in fiction from St. Mary’s College of California in 2005. She’s called many places home over the years—New Jersey, Maryland, DC, California, Louisiana—and currently lives, writes, and plays in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her two bonsai and her beloved. 

TeMika Grooms is an Atlanta-based artist and art activist who illustrated Save the Crash-test Dummies by Jennifer Swanson, Nana’s Favorite Things by Dorothy H. Price, and A Century for Caroline by Kaija Langley. She is the founder and program coordinator for KidsLitATL, a grassroots organization supporting a diverse group of creators in Atlanta, Georgia, where she lives with her cat, Nina Simone, and her two daughters, who she affectionately calls Thing One and Thing Two. You can visit her online at TeMikatheArtist.com.