February 14, 2022
Redniss, winner of a MacArthur “genius grant,” makes her picture book debut with a meditation on material culture, history, and memory, all reflected through a green glass jar that becomes one child’s time capsule. As the girl, who has brown skin, places items in the jar (starting with the date: “New York, Thursday, July 2, 2020”), mixed-media drawings, rendered in fine lines and softly textured washes, catalog the contents alongside minimal, reportorial typewritten-style text: “She added her tooth, which had fallen out a week earlier.” Changing background landscapes and varying degrees of context, detail, and reality give other jar additions the feel of reverie: “the key to an old house” attends the image of a figure walking through a red door, “the ticket from a visit to the aquarium” is held in front of a viewing window filled with colorful fish, and “her dream about outer space” is pictured in textural, inky blue. The girl buries the jar (“Open in 100 years,” its label reads) and wonders who will find it, an arc that hints at questions about objects’ meaning and what unlocks the mystery of existence in time and in place. Back matter includes an author’s note. Ages 4–8.