From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Sun, 19 Feb 2006 20:44:33 -0600

How do a people - or a nation - give adequate appreciation for the valiant deeds of unnamed individuals who made the survival of so many others possible? We cite one person at a time - real or fictional, it doesn't matter - to represent a spirit, a community, a generation, a movement.
  Woodson the writer chose to tell her personal story, or what her personal story might be if she had all the facts. She imagined a child leaving a South Carolina plantation without her family, taking some muslin, two needles and berry-dyed thread.
  So began the thread of a small epic, a big story. A poem. In Show Way generations of brave girls and courageous women are stitched together in a stunning narrative represented by quilt images * written and visual - beginning in enslavement and ending (but not stopping) today when little Toshi hears her foremothers' stories.
  Talbott the artist imagined in epic proportions, too, creating quilt shapes for whole pages, mixing photos of headlines and pictures of real people with vivid watercolor and chalk artwork, picturing one generation after another in its own historic time.
  Such a book can be read to someone young, and poured over for details by an older child. It's the book families save for the next generations, just as the stories here have been saved and then passed along.
  How do we do we begin singing praises for this gorgeous, joyful homage to the people who persevered through the adversities of enslavement and its aftermaths - even today? "People said about Soonie, That child could find beauty in so many things." And so did this writer and artist.
  Peace, Ginny
 
 

Ginny Moore Kruse gmkruse at education.wisc.edu
 
 
Received on Sun 19 Feb 2006 08:44:33 PM CST