During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama spoke often of his mother, Ann Dunham, and the lessons he and his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng from her work with poor rural communities around the world. Dunham died of cancer in 1995, before any of her grandchildren were born.

When Soetoro-Ng's daughter Sahaila asked her mother about grandma Annie, the answer was a children's book."Ladder to the Moon" is Maya Soetoro-Ng's attempt to connect her young daughter with the grandmother she never knew.

The book's title was inspired by a picture post card Dunham gave Maya when she was a child. It's a painting by Georgia O'Keeffe of a ladder floating against the night sky, with a half-moon high above it.

In the book, little Suhaila asks her mother what her grandmother was like. "Like the moon," her mother replies. "Full, soft and curious." Suhaila longs to meet her, and one night, her wish comes true. A golden ladder appears at her window and Grandma Annie invites the girl to come along on a magical journey. 

"The book is about an evening spent helping others to come up to the moon after natural disaster and religious strife and conflict.The moon becomes a sanctuary, an imagined place to heal and rest in hammocks and gets fun round and round until we're laughing loudly again."

Soetoro-Ng says it seems natural to connect her daughter and grandma Annie through the moon. Her late mother, she says, always loved the moon because it was the same for everybody, no matter where in the world they were. Under the glow of the moon, she recalls, her mother shared her most meaningful tales with her children.That's how Soetoro-Ng says she and her brother, President Obama, remember their mother - as a great story teller and a great role model.

"Like me, he feels that she is someone who gave us a strong moral compass, that she gave us compassion and desire to recognize the things that are common to all humanity and to reach across the divides even when doing so is hard.That's something tremendously valuable." 

It wasn't just her mother's tales that shaped who she and her brother have become. Soetoro-Ng says what parents do is more important than what they say. Ann Dunham, who had a PhD in anthropology, worked in rural development in some of the poorest places in the world.

"I recognize, for instance, that in making sure that we came along to villages and to her work, that our mother was trying to get us to see that these village people were just as important and powerful and loving and had just as much to teach as upper class, well-educated people.And the fact that I have that same impulse with Sahaila to make sure she understand braod-range of community is something that I know I get from mom."

Although her goal was to introduce her mother to her daughter, Soetoro-Ng says "Ladder to the Moon" has something to say to other young readers, and older ones as well.

"Slow down and think about the lessons of our elders. I think it is true that we look forward to enormous amounts of information, but I think we would be better off if we thought about the kinds of wisdom and thoughtfulness that we need in order to handle the enormous amount of information ahead."

Although Suhaila never knew her grandmother, Barack Obama and Maya Soetoro-Ng knew theirs.The author says grandparents can have an enormous influence on their grandchildren's lives. 

"Our grandmother was a formidable woman, very practical and very strong, very smart. She was for me a very balancing, steadying force. She took care of us both. My brother and I lived with her for a time and she allowed us to be brave because we knew that she would always take care of us, that there would be a safety net beneath us. And that was an important feeling to have. It was a great gift."

One of the other messages in "Ladder to the Moon" is that all people are intertwined. There's also messages of service. Soetoro-Ng says children need to know they are strong enough to take responsibility for themselves and others. 

"We need to teach our children empathy and care and love and communication and social responsibility in preparation for adulthood. We can't afford to live in isolation and we need to teach our kids that the things that they do not only matter to others far away, but impact others who live far away and there are ripples of effect. So that means we need to be responsible and thoughtful about our actions, about our relationship to the environment, about the way that we communicate and we ought to do so kindly.And we need to remind them that they are strong and can do much to impact the world and made those impacts be positive."

Maya Soetoro-Ng says she hopes "Ladder to the Moon" will start conversations between parents and children about the values and tools the young generation needs to have a positive impact on the world.