Aldabra, the Tortoise Who Loved Shakespeare Booktalk

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Scholastic Booktalk

Nonna said the way to cheat death is to transform yourself — but did she mean it literally or figuratively?

Elisa and her grandmother Nonna Eia are inseparable. Four afternoons a week, Elisa makes the half-hour walk from her house to Nonna's, in another part of Venice. But one day, when she's 10 years old, things she's never questioned about her mother and her grandmother begin to seem strange.

In all the years that Elisa has been going to see Nonna, her mother has never gone with her. When she was too young to go alone, their neighbors and friends took her — never her mother. And while her mother wants to know how Nonna is doing and asks all kinds of questions about her, Nonna never asks about her daughter. When Elisa tries to talk about her mother, Nonna just changes the subject.

But that's only one of the strange things. The other thing is that when Elisa brings Nonna homemade things to eat, she has to say that she made them all by herself, with no help from her mother. Nonna refuses to touch any food that her daughter has made for her.

Elisa adores her grandmother, who paints pictures, lives in a tiny but wonderful house, goes on walks with her, and talks to her about almost everything. Together they act out Shakespeare's plays. Nonna also tells Elisa stories, including Nonna's favorite, about how there was once a place in the world where women who wanted to cheat death could live forever. The secret to cheating death, Nonna always says, is to transform yourself into something else. That way, you won't always look the same, but you'll live forever.

Then one day, Elisa realizes that Nonna is beginning to act strangely. Her paintings change, her body changes, the way she moves and walks changes. But she's still Nonna, with her flower-scented breath and her passion for Shakespeare, even though her arms and legs grow thicker, her back becomes more and more curved, and her long, thick, white hair begins to fall out.

Elisa doesn't know what to do, and she's afraid to tell her mother. She's always thought Nonna's stories about transforming instead of dying were just that — stories. But Nonna is beginning to look so different — could they be true? Is Nonna really becoming another kind of creature? But how? And what?

This Booktalk was written by librarian and booktalking expert Joni R. Bodart

 

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