THE MEMORY CUPBOARD: A Thanksgiving Story

When Katie breaks the gravy boat (a childhood gift from Katie's mother to her grandmother) while clearing the Thanksgiving table, her grandmother shows Katie a "memory cupboard" crammed with other meaningful broken objects. Herman's (the Max Malone books) message focuses on forgiveness—stressing that people matter more than things—but the slow, stilted narrative serves only to deliver the moral, not to develop the characters. Stahl (The St. Patrick's Day Shillelagh) portrays a certain warmth between Katie and her grandmother, but the other characters look stiff, the compositions static. Ages 6-9. (Sept.)