Obama's Sister Puts Their Mom in Picture Book

NEW YORK, KOMPAS.com — Above a rooftop in Jakarta or the Indus River in Pakistan, the moon looms large in the childhood memories of Maya Soetoro-Ng, but President Obama's little sister hadn't realized how important those memories were until she was pregnant with her oldest daughter.

It was then she thought about how their mother, Ann Dunham, would jostle her awake wherever they were — in India or New York, England or Hawaii — to head outside so they could appreciate the moon. And how grandmother and granddaughter would never meet.

Suhaila, now 6, was born a decade after Dunham died of cancer, but Soetoro-Ng has paired her and "Grandma Annie" through the moon in a picture book out this month.

The dreamily drawn book from Candlewick Press, "Ladder to the Moon," opens with little Suhaila asking her mother what her grandmother was like. "She was like the moon," her mother replies. "Full, soft and curious."

In a telephone interview from her home in Hawaii, Soetoro-Ng told The Associated Press that she thought of her mother "a lot during my pregnancy, having come across boxes full of my children's books and toys that she had saved for me. That moment was a great shuddering moment of love and longing. I really did want to somehow connect the two of them."

She and husband Konrad Ng chose the name Suhaila because it means "glow around the moon" in Sanskrit. The book describes how one night, a golden ladder appears at the girl's open bedroom window with her grandmother, hair flowing down her back and silver bangles tinkling on her arms. The two climb to the moon, looking down on a world filled with sorrow, from earthquakes and tsunamis, poverty and intolerance.

They invite children and others who are suffering to take refuge on their gray, glowing moon, until it's time for the girl to say goodbye and climb back into bed, knowing they've helped others heal. Like Soetoro-Ng, who said she wrote the book to encourage unity, compassion and peace, Suhaila hopes the book will have an impact on the world.

"I hope my friends read my moms book," the first-grader said in an email, clearly composed on her own, 6-year-old grammar and all. "And my cousins read my moms book. and my teachers read my moms book. And when my sister is old enough to read I hope she reads it. I hope that when they read it they think about peace and no more fiting in the world and I hope that many peopol like it."

She continued: "I think its awesome that my name is in the book becuaes I love books and maybe someone like me will read the book and feel like I am there friend." Friendship was something that came easily to Dunham, explained Soetoro-Ng. Her mother lived in 13 different places around the world, first alone and later with her daughter and son in tow, but felt at home, "more or less," in each, Soetoro-Ng said.

And how did this affect Soetoro-Ng's famous brother? "That ability to break down perceived boundaries or cross bridges is something that he got from her," she said.