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This month The Edge of the Forest takes a look at picture books
with tradition and traditional stories at their heart. Anne Boles Levy reviews two books featuring African-American quilting,
while Julie Falkner considers a new take on the nativity story.
Little One, We Knew You’d Come
by Sally Lloyd-Jones, illustrated by Jackie Morris
Reviewed by Julie Falkner
Mary and Joseph received angelic visitors, but they were also a young couple awaiting with excitement and anxiety the
arrival of their firstborn. In Little One, We Knew You’d Come the softly poetic text expresses the couple’s hymn
of longing, transforming into a joyous song when their baby arrives. The book’s title forms the refrain, with a subtle
change on the last page providing just the right note for the finale.
While the text is baby-centered, the superb artwork—rendered in watercolor and gorgeous gold leaf—offers a more traditional
version of the Christmas story. Here are musician-angels, awe-filled shepherds, and lavishly dressed wise men. Here’s the
donkey with an air of patient exhaustion, bearing his heavily pregnant, blue-robed mistress while Joseph looks purposefully
ahead. And there’s the manger, complete with a sleeping cat, an inquisitive mouse, and two owls.
Later, the illustrations provide a moment of holiness: against a background of golden stars in an indigo night, we have a
first glimpse of the sleeping baby Jesus. Soon Mary’s ringlets frame her firstborn as animals—hares, a cat, moths, and a
mouse—gather to greet him. And as the angels “scoop that baby up, and softly sing a lullaby,” the wise men, shown with a
peacock-feather border, approach the fulfillment of their quest. As is true throughout the book, this painting harmonizes
beautifully with the text. The illustration of the travelers fills the double-page spread, and the few words appear
against a background of desert sand.
Little One, We Knew You’d Come celebrates both the beauty of nature and the miracle of birth as it tells a
familiar story in a new way. The loving words and lavish paintings form a memorable combination.
African-American Quilting
by Anne Boles Levy, Book Buds
I remember being so struck by Stephanie Woodson's Show Way,
I fretted over whether to donate it to Hurricane Katrina victims.
I decided to part with it, though it hurt to do so, but hoped it would find a home with someone who needed it more.
I have two more books in front of me that feature African-American quilting, and, as in Show Way, where the quilts
become symbols of freedom. While neither captures the break-all-the-molds uniqueness of Show Way, both are also
based on real people and left me somehow feeling both uplifted and heartbroken at the same time.
Night Boat to Freedom
by Margot Theis Raven, illustrated by E.B. Lewis
Christmas John is 12 when he begins rowing slaves across the Ohio River from Kentucky to freedom. His Granny Judith has
one request—what color did the passenger wear? Whatever color he tells her, she sews into a dazzling quilt. And it's
all the more poignant after she relates how she was lured onto a slave ship in Africa with patches of bright, red cloth.
But red will also be a lucky hue. When there's only two more spaces left on the quilt, she sews John a crimson shirt. But
the dogs are on his scent, and the owners are out with guns...and...and...you have to read the rest yourself.
I've noted before how many African-American illustrators rely heavily on realism, the better to layer all the details, the
symbols, the textures and shades and shadows of slavery. Lewis makes sure we won't miss a line on Granny Judith's careworn
face or the creeping gloom of the predawn river.
But the real treat is Raven's suspenseful, atmospheric text, told in first person from Christmas John's perspective. The
tone is reverant, even hushed, and heavy with imagery and layered meaning:
Then Granny Judith spoke so low even the dark couldn't hear her. "But now, Christmas John, we got a chance to
learn the color of freedom!"
Though the story's fictional, she describes in a lengthy end note how she delved into the Slave Narrative Collection,
compiled by the government during the Great Depression, for inspiration. The individuals are based on two real people who
likely never met, but whose histories have been stitched together for the sake of one seamless narrative.
Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria
by Kyra E. Hicks, illustrated by Lee Edward Fodi
This story of a freed slave who sews a quilt for England's queen is more literally true than Night Boat, and is
also a tear-jerker of the first order. We follow Martha Ann from slavery in Tennessee to freedom in Liberia.
Then the British Navy begins patrolling Liberian waters to ward off slavers, and Martha Ann hits on the idea of thanking
that nation's new monarch. Again, the quilting takes on a larger-than-life significance as Martha Ann's stitches her life
together again and again after various tragedies and setbacks, always with the same coffee-plant pattern, always setting
coins aside hoping to make that 3,500-mile trek to England.
Wow, was I rooting for poor Martha Ann. The story's told in simple, straightforward text—no fancy literary footwork
here, but this gripping tale doesn't really need it. Fodi's watercolors fill in those blanks by depicting Martha Ann at
work, both in the fields and over her masterpiece.
A press release describes Hicks' own journey into Martha Ann's life: visiting Windsor Castle, weeding through Library of
Congress newspaper microfilm, interviewing distant relatives. I'm glad she was so obsessed: this true story adds a colorful
piece to the patchwork of American history.
Here's more about African-American quilts,
and their use by slaves.
Little One, We Knew You’d Come, by Sally Lloyd-Jones. Illustrations by Jackie Morris. Little, Brown
and Company, 2006. ISBN: 0-3165-2391-7.
Night Boat to Freedom, by Margot Theis Raven. Illustrations by E. B. Lewis. Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
2006. ISBN: 0-3743-1266-4.
Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria, by Kyra E. Hicks. Illustrations by Lee Edward Fodi. Brown Books
Publishing Group, 2006. ISBN: 1-9332-8559-1.
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