Three Pieces of Broken Glass

A beloved relative’s treasured artifacts convey events personal and historical in this meaningful telling from Barth Isler (The Color of Sound), making a picture book debut inspired by a family story, and Stamper (A Knot Is Not a Tangle). An unnamed child narrator enjoys visiting Great-Grandma Inge, who “sets the table like it’s a special occasion... and serves our water in fancy glasses.” When the youth inadvertently shatters one of the rose-tinged vessels, the woman offers comfort, saying, “It’s not only good luck to break glass sometimes, but it’s also tradition,” and gestures to three shards on the windowsill. Depictions of the events behind each follow: one, part of a glass crushed under the bridegroom’s foot on Great-Grandma Inge’s wedding day, is a token of “all sixty-five years they were married, and... a reminder of their love.” The other two relate to difficult events of WWII. The first, from Germany’s Kristallnacht, was an indicator that “it was time to leave our home and find a new place, where we could be safe”; the other is a good luck piece that preceded the family’s wartime reunification. Watercolor and gouache illustrations depict the past in b&w and the present in full color. Jagged cracks reflect destruction, separation, and the world coming apart, while transparent feathery washes background rich, detailed scenes of new lives coming together. An author’s note concludes. Ages 4–8. Author’s agent: Emily Keyes, Keyes Agency. Illustrator’s agent: Lori Kilkelly, LK Literary. (Apr.)