A man asks his great-granddaughter to pick an item from among his chock-a-block miscellany of antiques, books and knick-knacks, and he will tell her its story. It's an engaging way for them to get to know each other, and to draw in readers.
The child chooses the man's matchbox collection, from the days when matches were wooden, and each box opened like a secret drawer. The man tells his great-granddaughter the collection is his diary, "a way to remember what happens to you." He explains that at her age, he had a lot he wanted to remember but couldn't read or write. So these matchboxes served as a record of daily events. In Bagram Ibatoulline's acrylic gouache paintings, he gets the vintage look of the matchboxes just right, while also planting both protagonists firmly in the present. Scenes of the man's impoverished childhood in Italy appear in sepia tones to distinguish his memories from the present-day exchange between the girl and her great-grandfather. The first matchbox holds an olive pit, which conjures a memory from the man's childhood of when food was scarce, and his mother gave him an olive pit to suck on when he was hungry ("It helped," he says). A photo of the man's father sparks the story of him going on ahead of his family, to earn their passage to America.
As a boy, the great-grandfather promised his own grandmother he'd never forget her or Italy, and as he waited for the steamship to take him, his mother and his siblings across the Atlantic, he discovered the matchboxes, and found a way to record his memories: his first soda (a bottle cap), his journey on the steamboat (a hairpin from a wealthy passenger), and 19 sunflower shells, one for each day of the ship's journey. Together author and artist draw clear pathways from the memento in the matchbox to the memory it triggers. Fleischman touches on class divides and bigotry in an unsentimental way, allowing the facts themselves to leave their impact on readers. At the story's center is a love of family, and respect for education, which leads to the great-grandfather's vocation--and inspires an avocation for the young heroine. A heartwarming universal immigrant story made poignant through specific details. --Jennifer M. Brown
Shelf Talker: This poignant immigrant story comes alive through the details a man shares with his great-granddaughter, triggered by mementos he has safeguarded in his matchbox collection.