Drawing on concepts and observations from age studies, this article analyses Otfried Preußler’s construction of old age through the grandmother figure in the first three volumes of Der Räuber Hotzenplotz series. While the grandmother is partly a source of ridicule, displaying physical and mental weaknesses that are stereotypically associated with old age, she also embodies a progress narrative with moments of growth. The end of the second volume and opening scenes of the third volume in particular cast her as a resourceful character with agency and aspirations of her own. Read mimetically, the grandmother displays what age scholars call a “seriatim life plot” with ups and downs. Read semiotically, she functions as a source of humour, but also as the affective centre of the series, providing a sense of warm familiarity and home for both the other characters and the readers.