Three Pieces of Broken Glass

Evocative and soul-stirring, Three Pieces of Broken Glass—based on the personal history of author Emily Barth Isler and featuring incandescent illustrations by Vesper Stampe—explores how we must seek to find beauty and strength in even the darkest, most broken times.

Three pieces of broken glass sit on Grandma Inge’s windowsill.

Even though they are small, sharp, and jagged, the light shines through them, casting beautiful rainbows on the wall.

When Inge’s great-granddaughter asks why Inge has kept these shards, she learns decades-old stories from her great-grandmother’s life—from the joy of glass breaking at her wedding to harrowing reminders of smashed windows during Kristallnacht. And she comes to understand why we hold onto our memories both happy and sad.

From award-winning creators Emily Barth Isler and Vesper Stamper, this inspiring and moving story shows what it means to see the world in a hopeful light, even when it is broken.

Author Biography

Emily Barth Isler is the award-winning author of the middle grade novels AfterMath and The Color of Sound. Her writing has appeared in Allure, Oprah Daily, O Quarterly, Kveller, Publisher’s Weekly, Today.com, and more. As the cofounder of the Burbank Book Festival in Southern California, Isler loves providing opportunities for all kinds of stories to be heard. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their two kids. Vesper Stamper writes and illustrates books that tell stories of broken things being put back together. Her debut novel, What the Night Sings, was a Sydney Taylor Book Award winner, a National Book Award nominee, and a National Jewish Book Award finalist. She and her husband, Ben Stamper, have all sorts of artistic escapades near New York City, where Vesper teaches illustration at the School of Visual Arts.