It is a cold New Year's Eve in a prosperous American city of the early twentieth century. People clutch their coats close to their bodies as they hurry home to prepare for the evening's festivities. No one notices a poor little girl huddling in a corner, trying to keep warm by lighting the matches she was given to sell on the street. As each match flickers to life, she sees marvelous visions and feels the warm glow of hope and love. The luminous art of four-time Caldecott Honor recipient Jerry Pinkney transforms the nineteeth-century Danish girl of Hans Christian Andersen's tale into a child plucked straight from America's melting pot, shedding new light on the invisibility of the poor among the prosperous – a circumstance as familiar in Andersen's day as it is in our own.
