The Matchbox Diary

The Matchbox Diary not only has absolutely gorgeous, realistic illustrations by Bagram Ibatoulline, it has an inventive story by Paul Fleischman. The great-grandfather and great-granddaughter, not named in the story, take a journey back in time through the old man’s diary. On the first page we find out that the two have met for the first time, the girl being five or six. The man explains that his matchboxes served as his diary because he did not learn how to read or write as a child growing up in poverty in Italy. He wanted to remember the important things in his life–the olive pit his mother gave him to suck on to assuage hunger, for example–and saving fragments of things was the only way an illiterate boy could.The matchbox diaries eloquently document the boy’s journey to America on stormy seas, the difficult jobs he and his family took in order to survive, the prejudice they faced as immigrants, and his eventual transcendence into literacy. Ibatoulline uses sepia for flashbacks; all the illustrations are impeccably detailed.

This would make a good read aloud for pre and early readers, and more experienced readers will enjoy it on their own. Teachers and caregivers can use the idea of chronological keepsakes as a way of getting children to document their own lives. And it won’t require electricity.

The Matchbox Diary is published by Candlewick Press. It has forty pages, and is aimed at children ages 6-9. That excludes me, but I’m reading it with my nephew (ten months) anyway. It gives me a sense of what my own grandparents might have experienced as immigrants. Baby Jack should know the story of how he and all that glossy Italian hair got here.