On a visit to her great-grandfather's house, a little girl picks out an old cigar box so she can listen to him tell her its story. He opens the box to reveal many matchboxes. He explains that it's his diary. In each box is a token of a past memory. In the first is an olive pit he sucked on when he was a hungry boy in Italy. In another is the first bottle cap he ever saw, collected on his journey to Naples. Together great-grandfather and great-granddaughter revisit his past and his journey from Italy to America.
The story is a familiar one--a great-grandparent travels from his country to America to find a better life. Though its difficult, he lives out his own American dream. But I don't know that it's a story that gets old--especially not with a telling like this. Fleischman has obviously chosen the objects and memories with care, then telling the story in a straightforward manner, through dialogue. The grandfather sucked on an olive pit because there was no food in his home. To communicate, his father had to find someone to write letters for him, and then his wife in Italy had to get the schoolmaster's son to read them aloud because the entire family was illiterate (hence the diary kept with objects instead of words).
Bagram Ibatoulline's expressive illustrations evoke nostalgia. The pages are textured and colored like old, fragile paper, and the images of past memories are done in a sepia color palette, like old photographs you might see at the Ellis Island Immigration museum. The current conversation between grandfather and granddaughter is in saturated color, distinguishing it from memory. The softness of Ibatoulline's illustrations also lends itself to the nostalgic feel as many of the illustrated memories have a dream-like quality to them.
I think children would love the idea of a diary of objects. I can see application in homes and classrooms--invitations for children to create their own diaries with collected objects.
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