The Matchbox Diary

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Follow a girl's perusal of her great-grandfather's collection of matchboxes and small curios that document his poignant immigration journey from Italy to a new country.

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beautiful submitted by unknown on July 30, 2013, 2:20pm WOW! I'm not sure I know what to say about this book. I knew when I saw that it was written by Paul Fleischman and illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline that it would be a wonderful book. I was not disappointed. The book more than lived up to my expectations. The immigration experience is not a new story, but telling it through the lens of a diary kept by a young boy through small objects he collected and stored in old matchboxes is brilliant. A story told through the objects gathered over a lifetime. The grandfather in the story grew up in Italy and didn't learn to read until moving to America, but he wanted to have a diary so he began collecting items that represented things of importance to him. Each object has seemingly little significance, except in his memory. A tender story of the power of things around us to remind us of important events in our lives.

As for the illustrations, they are exquisite. The detail on the acrylic gouache (watercolor) paintings is amazing. The illustrations are so detailed they almost look like old photographs, which is clearly what the artist was going for. The pictures of the great-grandfather with his granddaughter are done in beautiful shades of color while the pictures representing the stories of his past that he tells are in shades of brown and white. The innocence of the children and the kindness and wisdom of the grandfather shine through very clearly. This is the kind of picture book that I love to just sit and look at because of the beauty of it. I highly recommend this story of family and change and life.

uncanny valley? submitted by camelsamba on June 24, 2014, 8:09pm Although I really liked the style and detail of the matchboxes and contents, the pictures of the people bothered me for some reason. Maybe there's an element of uncanny valley? Or maybe I'm just not into hyper-realistic representational portraiture right now. The story is interesting, although from a dispassionate perspective some of the choices seem strange.