Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | EASY FLE | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | EASY FLE | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman and Bagram Ibatoulline tell a breathtaking immigration tale with appeal across generations.
"Pick whatever you like most. Then I'll tell you its story."
When a little girl visits her great-grandfather at his curio-filled home, she chooses an unusual object to learn about: an old cigar box. What she finds inside surprises her: a collection of matchboxes making up her great-grandfather's diary, harboring objects she can hold in her hand, each one evoking a memory. Together they tell of his journey from Italy to a new country, before he could read and write -- the olive pit his mother gave him to suck on when there wasn't enough food; a bottle cap he saw on his way to the boat; a ticket still retaining the thrill of his first baseball game. With a narrative entirely in dialogue, Paul Fleischman makes immediate the two characters' foray into the past. With warmth and an uncanny eye for detail, Bagram Ibatoulline gives expressive life to their journey through time -- and toward each other.
Author Notes
Paul Fleischman was born in Monterey, California on September 5, 1952. His father is fellow children's author, Sid Fleischman. He attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years, from 1970 to 1972. He dropped out to go on a cross-country train/bicycle trip and along the way took care of a 200-year-old house in New Hampshire. He eventually earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of New Mexico in 1977.
Fleischman has written over 25 books for children and young adults including award winners such as Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices, Newberry Medal in 1989; Graven Images, Newberry Honor; Bull Run, Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction; Breakout, Finalist for the National Book Award in 2003; Saturnalia, Boston Globe-Horn Book Fiction Honor. He has also garnered numerous awards and recognitions from the American Library Association, School Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly, Booklist, and NCTE.
He founded the grammar watchdog groups ColonWatch and The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to English.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
If you can't read or write, how do you remember the important moments of your life? An elderly man explains to his great-granddaughter that he created a diary of objects, each saved in a matchbox. One matchbox holds an olive pit from his native Italy, given to him by his mother to suck on when the family had no food. A fish bone reminds him of grueling work in canneries ("always a man watching to make sure we weren't slowing down"). But there are also matchboxes that hold a ticket to a baseball game, as well as pieces of coal and moveable type that represent how the man finally achieved literacy and a comfortable life. Fleischman's voice for the girl's great-grandfather is instantly engrossing, free of self-pity and resonant with resilience and gratitude. Ibatoulline, who previously worked with Fleischman on The Animal Hedge, is in equally fine form: his characters' emotionally vivid faces speak of hard lives and fervent dreams, and his sepia-toned scenes never lapse into sentimentality. A powerful introduction to the American immigrant story, and fine inspiration for a classroom project. Ages 6-10. Illustrator's agent: Nancy Gallt Literary Agency. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
An Italian immigrant tells his great-granddaughter the family's history by showing her his "diary"--the contents of the matchboxes that he collected before he could write. His storytelling is so captivating that it will probably escape readers' notice that the girl isn't much of a character. Realistic acrylic gouache paintings on mottled tan pages simulate photographs of an earlier time. (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Small-scale objects tell a large-scale, European-coming-to-America story in this beautiful offering from two celebrated children's book creators. When a young girl meets her great grandfather, she asks him about his old collection of little matchboxes, and he explains that at her age he could not read and write. To remember his experiences, he kept symbolic things in matchboxes, starting with an olive pit that his mother gave him to suck on when he was hungry while growing up in Italy. Also in the boxes are reminders of his journey across the ocean in steerage, bones from the cannery where his family worked in the U.S., a tooth he lost when bullies threw rocks at him, a ticket for his first baseball game, and other things he kept to show his progress as he learned to read and rose to become a successful adult. The moving conversation is illustrated with Ibatoulline's finely detailed acrylic-and-gouache images, which appear first in sepia tones and then with glowing red accents. Along with Fleischman's lyrical, spare words, the body language depicted in the artwork captures the drama of the immigrant story, from heartbreaking partings and hard struggle to, finally, success. An excellent title for sharing and discussion, this will resonate with the many kids who will recognize how small, ordinary things can become treasures.--Rochman, Hazel Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
EXTENDED family is not in the full-time business of being your family, and that is mostly to their advantage. They visit, they leave - even when they live with you, it is rarely forever. Your own children must process, somehow, that their extended family is your immediate family. Which is to say that you are the only one obligated to love both families, and the only one who can really understand why you do, or at least why you should. It helps if the extended family is lovable. Often it is not. Three new picture books examine the extended family from a child's perspective, with varying degrees of intimacy and sentimentality. They serve to affirm that when children regard us, they do so by taking us at our word, by reminding us of the present, and in evaluations without context, which are ofttimes the most thorough and unyielding. The most unforgiving in this group is "Oy, Feh, So?," by Cary Fagan, a look at two aunts and an uncle who come by every Sunday afternoon in an old Lincoln. Each has the same reaction to any given situation: Aunt Essy says "Oy"; Aunt Chanah says "Feh"; and Uncle Sam says "So?" When Mom comes in and says, "Such beautiful weather," their responses are, in short order: "Oy. As if I haven't seen nicer"; "Feh. It'll probably rain"; and, of course, "So? Is the weather going to make me young again?" The children in the story take it upon themselves to commit outrageous acts - exposing the aunts and uncle to a child-eating dragon - in an attempt to get their relatives to say anything new. My powers of deduction, my yeshiva education and my exposure to Mel Brooks movies combine to inform me that this family is Jewish, a fact underlined with Gary Clement's illustrations of their red, swollen noses - just in case I missed it, I guess. I would be hard pressed to say I didn't recognize these characters from my own Yiddish-speaking, eye-rolling, large-nosed, complaining family, which means that - this just in - stereotypes are still based on truths. And I feel as if I should like a story in which I can see my own family's reflection. (I'm big into ethnic pride.) Still, something about it didn't sit right with me, despite how much my 5-year-old and I liked it when we read it. It was only later that the lingering sense that I'd been made fun of to my face hampered the enjoyment. (For the record, my son does not have similar misgivings.) In the end, the large-nosed, one-note aunts and uncle find they have a sense of humor about themselves. But I guess Jews always do, right? I give it an "Oy" - squarely between a "So?" and a "Feh." And such small portions! "The Matchbox Diary," written by Paul Fleischman and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, is a softer tale in which a 5-year-old meets her great-grandfather for the first time and learns about his experience immigrating to America from Italy when he was young. Illiterate and unable to keep a diary, he instead collected matchbooks full of keepsakes - the 19 sunflower seeds to mark the days of the journey to Ellis Island, ticket stubs from his first baseball game. It's a sweet story, illustrated alternately in gauzy color for the pictures of the girl and the old man, sepia-toned images for the olden days, bringing to mind not just a little bit "Godfather II." The final page is a wordless picture of the girl, headed home on an airplane with a keepsake candy box, her own souvenir, her own diary in the making. It's a lovely ending. THE story is good, but technically hard to read, with the narrative unfolding in a very grown-up manner. An absence of setup leaves the reader to deduce that a man is meeting his greatgranddaughter for the first time. I'm not against work, but this seemed overly complicated. The narrative is also told fully in dialogue without attribution. Perhaps the author expects readers to give the characters voices? For me, it got confusing not remembering whose turn it was to speak, and I had to keep going back. I'm not saying that I'm the type of mother who likes to zone out during the 14th reading of a children's book (at least not in print, I'm not), but it does make the going a bit frustrating. My favorite of the three books is "My Grandpa," written and illustrated by Marta Altés, a short, illustrated description of a little bear's grandfather, as told by the little bear. The grandfather has some sort of dementia: he doesn't always remember things and even forgets who the little bear is, heartbreakingly illustrated by a "confused" squiggle above the grandfather's head. The story's magic is found in its spare illustrations and hushed quiet, as though you were being whispered to under the covers. A few pages in, the little bear mentions that Grandpa gets lonely, "But then I come along!" and Grandpa smiles for the first time in the story. He's been feeding birds, and he turns to greet his grandchild as the birds flee from the boisterousness children bring. The grandfather, no longer the bear he used to be, can still make the little bear smile with his playful games, no matter his limitations, no matter what time has done to him. It is in this story, in contrast to "Oy, Feh, So?," that we remember why small children are so important in an extended family. They are not merely mirrors held up to show us our shortcomings and the ways we disappoint. They are the people who forgive us for no longer being what we started out wanting to be, who don't remind us how we are no longer what we were and who have no memory of us when we were any better than we are now. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, has also written for The Los Angeles Times, Self, O and Salon.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 1-4-An Italian-American immigrant shares his childhood memories with his great-granddaughter. The twist of this tale is that his memories have been kept in a "diary" of saved objects that commemorate the important events of his life. As a poor child who could neither read nor write, this now-elderly gentleman found a unique way to preserve his memories by saving the objects in matchboxes. Among the many items were a box of sunflower seed shells that counted the days from Naples to New York, a fish bone to remember the long days the entire family had to work in the canneries, and a ticket stub from his first baseball game. The journey unfolds prompted by the child's curious questions. Her inquiries provoke the descriptive vignettes of an earlier time and yet frame the story through the eyes of a youngster of today. Ibatoulline's sepia-toned illustrations beautifully express this immigrant's tale from Italy to Ellis Island and the start of a new life. They also provide a wonderful contrast to the warm-colored illustrations that depict a loving, appreciative relationship between an elderly man and a young child. This lovingly crafted picture book tells an amazing story that is uniquely American. Through unsentimental, yet warm and touching dialogue, Fleischman successfully shares a powerful journey that captures the hardships, self-reliance, strength, and simple joys that characterized early immigrants. It provides an inspirational introduction to the immigration story that captures the humanity of the journey.-Carole Phillips, Greenacres Elementary School, Scarsdale, NY (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The story of one person's life is the very essence of history, transcending time, distance and generations. A little girl and her great-grandfather meet for the first time and attempt to get to know each other. The child is intrigued by the curiosities she sees in a collection of matchboxes. These matchboxes represent the memories of the old man's life, a tangible diary, undertaken as a substitute for the written form at a time in his life when he was illiterate. Bits and pieces contained within call forth events, emotions or people that were important in his life's journey, from his early childhood in Italy to the difficult voyage to America and the struggles of his immigrant family in the new world. An olive pit, a pen nib, a fish bone, a piece of coal and more tell of poverty, dreams and perseverance. Writing entirely in dialogue, Fleischman employs a natural and believable matter-of-fact tone that provides a fresh view of the immigrant experience, as the humble objects and their stories form the beginning of a loving bond between the little girl and her great-grandfather. Ibatoulline's illustrations, done in acrylic gouache, are extraordinarily detailed and expressive. Modern scenes appear in warm, amber-toned colors, while framed sepia vignettes depict past memories as if part of a family album. Captivating and powerful. (Picture book. 6-10)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
