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, containing 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 stone his mother gave him to suck on when there wasn't enough food; a hairpin he found on 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,