Quilts in the middle of hot, humid August? Maybe it doesn't fit in temperature, but it sure does fit in symbolism of my column themes this summer. I can't think of another emblem that represents American art, closeness, security and family treasure...unless perhaps it's a loved children's book. Quilts must have the same meaning to many children's books authors and illustrators for their proliferation creates a veritable patchwork of different stories. So many, in fact, that once again I find there are two columns worth. I begin with books that honor quilting as an art form and more specifically as a symbol of American art.
Ann Whitford Paul's Eight Hands Round: A Patchwork Alphabet seems a good place to begin. Her book describes the probable history of twenty-six quilt patterns as evolved from American history. The pattern, "Eight Hands Round", for example, memorializes the dance a woman might have had at a quilting party to mark the completion of her hard work. Like patchworks, Ms. Paul's text and Jeanette Winter's illustrations, allow us to see how bits and pieces of quilting's development and facets of our history have been seamed together to created an important American art form. Ages 5-9. (HarperCollins, 1991)
Barbara Hancock Cole's Texas Star gives a real sense of what quilt creation feels like. When the mother of a family detects the impending chill of winter, against her husbands protests, she invites a group of women to stitch a Texas Star quilt. Sewing, eating, and chatting yield a product by evening. It's none too soon. An icy wind blows and the family cuddles in front of the fire for an old story under the new cover. In a book of very few words, Cole give readers an authentic spirit of a quilt's fabrication. Ages 3-7. (Orchard, 1990)
Stitchery becomes the medium to discuss artistic visioning in Sylvia Fair's The Bedspread. Two ninety year-old women are connected by a quilt because each occupies either end of a bed. They are also bound together by boredom until they decide to embellish the white bedspread with needlework representations of the home in which they were raised. It is then their similarity ends. One sister's end of the quilt is bright-colored and emotion filled; the other's is precise and beautifully crafted. In the end, both admire and appreciate the other's work, individual expression, and life view. Ages 4-8. (Morrow, 1982)
There are two older protagonists in Mr. Nick's Knitting by Margret Wild. Mr. Nick and Mrs. Jolley meet over a discovered love of knitting on the seven a.m. train. As they travel and click-clack their needles, they watch passengers and scenery as well as stitches. One day, Mrs. Jolley becomes ill and is stuck in a pale white hospital room with no travel and nothing to notice. Mr. Nick responds immediately by knitting non-stop until he has produced a yarn quilt full of happy and familiar scenes. The last page of the book shows them pair once again, knitting busily and joyously, while gazing on familiar sights. They are separated only by location and by the fact that one views reality and one gazes on its knitted representation. Mr. Nick quickly won my respect as hero--he knits ( in fact, knits in public), for his nephews and nieces (not just himself), he tenderly listens to a dear friend and then produces a marvelous cure! Ages 4-8. (HBJ, 1988)
Life and art merge in Faith Ringgold's Tar Beach and Virginia Woolf's Nurse Lugton's Curtain. After twenty-five years of painting, Faith Ringgold was drawn to using quilting as a medium for her art. Quilter-artist Faith Ringgold expands visual to literary masterpiece in Tar Beach. Tar Beach was originally created as of one of her "story quilts". Expanded in its picture book format, this is an autobiographical story of a magical child who can float above and transform all the problems of her life in 1940 Harlem. It is boardered with fabric strips and has a strong, bold primitive style. Deceptively simple in word count and presentation, the book is full of complex ideas that you will want to expand with your child. Ages 6-10. Ages 6-9. (Crown, 1991)
Nurse Lugton's Curtain, written in 1920, has found new expression in a picture book format with illustrations by Julie Vivas. The simple story tells of an old nurse who nods and sleeps over her needlework. When she begins to snore, the animals, scenery, and people come to life and the old nurse is merely a large mountain viewed from their vantage point. Julie Vivas should change her name to Vivid for it is that quality which always fills her work and always brings stories alive. Ages 5-8. (HBJ, 1991)
Aunt Louise's Book Shop is celebrating quilts with a display of children's books about quilts, a lovely handmade quilt and a contest--the child who most closely guesses the number of stitches in a square will win a prize! Contest ends August 28th.
And here's more quilts! Books with quilt themes that parallel the comfort and tenderly-created caring of family. For sometimes the physical and emotional warmth of a quilt can ease transitions just as family can.
It's a move that soothed by a patchwork in Tony Johnston's The Quilt Story, illustrated by Tomie dePaola. Generations apart, two young girls are contented by the familiarity of the very same quilt. Both are joined across time not only by relation and by the same issues and fears about moving, but by loving parents who understand their difficulties. I found that this book led to an interesting discussion of heirlooms and the personal history of things handed down through families. Ages 4-7. (Putnam, 1985)
As Faith travels west in a covered wagon in 1850, she pieces a quilt. The pieces are joined as much by stories about her accompanying pet hen Josefina as by thread. In fact, when the quilt is complete, Faith refers to it as The Josefina Story Quilt. Eleanor Coerr makes history accessible in an I-Can-Read format and fills the pages with quilting designs based on Faith and Josephina's adventures. Ages 5-8. (HarperCollins, 1986)
Patricia Polacco's The Keeping Quilt is a story of four generations of a family. The element that ties them together is the quilt made from little Anna's babushka shortly after when she arrives from Russia. Not only does the story speak to acculturation, but it reveals elements specific to the Jewish culture and even more especially to a particular family. As the quilt becomes a tablecloth, wedding canopy, and baby blanket it remains the only colored illustration in the book's monochromatic pictures becoming a uniting illustrative theme just as it has connected the continuity of family. Ages 4-8. (Simon and Schuster, 1988)
The making of a quilt unites family in Valerie Flournoy's The Patchwork Quilt. Grandma works endlessly on her "masterpiece" showing her granddaughter Tanya how it tells a life story. Tanya sees fabric swatches from her life become a part of the blanket and understands. When grandmother becomes sick, each member of the family adds to the accumulating squares until finally it is finished, save the final patch, labeling it as a gift from grandmother and mother to Tanya. In addition to the main theme of family, there are nice undercurrents of the special understanding of grandmother and child and again, the healing quality of a quilt that links together generations. Ages 4-8. (Dial, 1985)
Ten year-old Ariel's life is full of transitions. World War II looms, her beloved grandmother is aging and her mother is pregnant. Artist Ariel, wanting desperately to give a special gift to her new sibling, creates The Canada Geese Quilt, an original design drawn of the wilderness beauty she holds dear. Ariel's grandmother is to quilt the drawing, but a stroke renders her unable and distant. All familiar falls away from Ariel's life and she struggles to finish the quilt and hold on to the treasured relationship she has with her grandmother in a future that seems uncertain. Again, it is a quilt that becomes the magic symbol of their special love. Author Natalie Kinsey-Warnock creates a powerful story that is not afraid to touch sensitivites in a first novel. Leslie Bowman 's pencil drawings respond well to the story's feeling tone and to the power of nature that so moves Ariel in the story. I am always impressed to find a beginning novel that is unafraid of poignancy. Ages 7-11. (Cobblehill, Dutton, 1989)
The most powerful story I have read this year is Lauren Mills' The Rag Coat. Minna, 8, is born into a poor Appalachian family. Her mother quilts to provide for the family because Minna's father is sick with miner's cough. Minna hungers for schooling and before her father dies, he wishes the same for her. When Minna declines an education because she knows she has no coat to warm her on the long winter walks, her determined mother and the "Quilting Mothers" of her acquaintance combine forces, putting aside money-producing projects for this more important goal. They produce a coat full of faded colors and community stories. It is lined with the feed bag Minna's father once carried her in. Minna adores school and thrives, until the days turn cold. It is then that she wears her prized coat and is teased mercilessly by school mates. When Minna takes her school sharing time to "tell" the coat, both she and her friends are struck with the compassion of the many people created it. Lauren Mills' telling is strongly representative of the culture it depicts in simplicity and honesty. Her soft watercolors are as warming as a coat composed of love. Ages 5-10. (Little Brown, 1991)