Tommaso and the Missing Line (Matteo Pericoli)

As we were reading this book, there were a lot of perplexed faces in my class. They didn't quite know what to make of this missing line.

...I didn't have much to offer them either.

It is a charming story. We have a boy who is Italian and he was eager to tell us the Italian word for Grandma and of the people he knew with the same Italian names. Beautiful illustrations. Mysterious and well, vague!

They liked how the line goes through the entire story and he finds lines everywhere.

But somehow, we couldn't quite get why he had lost the line and how he thought he could get help finding it.


Goodreads summary:

ON THE DAY the strange thing happens—the day his line goes missing—Tommaso knows what he must do: find it. It’s the line on the drawing he puts in his pocket every day, the line he drew of the hill by his nonna’s house, and he knows he must find that very one.

Is that it there in the curl of the cat’s tail? No. Is it there in the antenna of the car? No, not it. It suddenly dawns on Tommaso whom to ask: Nonna. Nonna will know.

In a spare story with a fable-like tone, Matteo Pericoli takes us through an Italian landscape in search of Tommaso’s line—and in doing so brings us along on a journey of discovery. Exquisitely detailed black-and-white art is punctuated by a bright ribbon of orange: Tommaso’s missing line (or is it?).