"Reading breaks down the walls that divide us. By reading, we get to know people outside of our own communities. We gain knowledge others don't expect us to have. We discover new and surprising passions. Reading is critical to our growth, both as individuals and as a society."
Gene Luan Yang
- The immigrant experience is known to most of us via our grandparents or family history, yet it is a flashpoint in politics today. Newbery Medalist Paul Fleischman's poignant tale uses objects and the love of a great-grandfather and granddaughter to cement the truth of immigration in our minds and hearts. Sepia tone illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline give a historic, photographic quality to the story that takes the reader back in time to a little boy who can neither read nor write, but he can collect and save his personal history from Italy and in America.
Children love collections and boxes, and Fleischman knowingly designs an engaging history lesson from great-grandfather's matchbox collection. The reader learns from the granddaughter's questions and perspective of a life much different than her own just two generations later.
Great grandfather's life is simply told, but it holds great details of the trials and triumphs of poverty, hard work, and loving family ties still strong today. The first box holds an olive pit that the young boy sucked on when there was little food. Another reveals a fancy hairpin left by a rich woman on the voyage from Naples to America. Still anthers recalls great grandfather's fear of men in New York he nicknamed "buttonhook men." The fear? At Ellis Island, men would use buttonhook handles to roll up children's eyes to inspect for disease.
The entire family works at canning fish, sorting peaches, peeling shrimp, and more as they traveled to create a life in America. These new arrivals were shunned. As great grandfather tells it while sharing a box with a lone tooth, "The same people who bought our cans of sardines wouldn't look at us. Back then some people didn't want Italians here. Sometimes boys threw rocks. That's how my tooth got here."
In the final full spread, the granddaughter and great grandfather converse:
"I wish I could write a diary."
"Do you go to school yet?"
"To kindergarten."
"Lucky girl. You'll be writing before you know it. 'Till then, I'll bet you're a good collector, like me."
Our final illustration shows the pre-schooler back on a plane, a matchbox in her lap beginning her collection. It is priceless, so go get this book and enjoy the journey of this book yourself and read it to a special someone. Read without walls.
(A few links: for teachers , and a video.)
