Here are 100 books that The Keeping Quilt fans have personally recommended if you like
The Keeping Quilt.
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When I was a teenager, my mother sewed me a quilt, but when I moved to Wales and discovered Welsh antic quilts, my interest became a passion. These bold red and black flannel patchworks with intricate quilting seem contemporary but date back to the 19th century. I have been painting them and have learned a lot about their history and how they have provided income and artistic expression for women over the years. It’s a pleasure to see that this passion is shared by so many people worldwide, and I’m fascinated by all the stories these beautiful objects hold.
I love this children’s book about languages and how quilting can become a metaphor for our patchwork society, with differences and unity.
I particularly liked the Arabic words scattered here and there without an immediate translation (there is a glossary at the end), and it was fun to try to make sense of them by the context and empathize with the characters as they learn to live a bilingual life.
That night, Kanzi wraps herself in the beautiful Arabic quilt her teita (grandma) in Cairo gave her and writes a poem in Arabic about the quilt. Next day her teacher sees the poem and gets the entire class excited about creating a "quilt" (a paper collage) of student names in Arabic. In the end, Kanzi's most treasured reminder of her old home provides a pathway for acceptance in her new one.
This authentic story with beautiful illustrations includes a glossary of Arabic words and a presentation of Arabic letters with their phonetic English equivalents.
When I was a teenager, my mother sewed me a quilt, but when I moved to Wales and discovered Welsh antic quilts, my interest became a passion. These bold red and black flannel patchworks with intricate quilting seem contemporary but date back to the 19th century. I have been painting them and have learned a lot about their history and how they have provided income and artistic expression for women over the years. It’s a pleasure to see that this passion is shared by so many people worldwide, and I’m fascinated by all the stories these beautiful objects hold.
I love the storyline of this book, the rhythm in the words, and the beautiful illustrations that remind me of American folk art paintings. It’s a delight to read aloud to my children, and it’s easy for them and for me to empathize with the main characters as they have to move and adapt to a new life.
After a move to a new home, comfort comes from a surprising place.
Long ago, a young girl named Abigail put her beloved patchwork quilt in the attic. Generations later, another young girl discovers the quilt and makes it her own, relying on its warmth to help her feel secure in a new home.
When I was a teenager, my mother sewed me a quilt, but when I moved to Wales and discovered Welsh antic quilts, my interest became a passion. These bold red and black flannel patchworks with intricate quilting seem contemporary but date back to the 19th century. I have been painting them and have learned a lot about their history and how they have provided income and artistic expression for women over the years. It’s a pleasure to see that this passion is shared by so many people worldwide, and I’m fascinated by all the stories these beautiful objects hold.
This book is a real joy to read, with a particular story of a particular family but a universal feel to it. It could be my story or yours. The illustrations have the charm of the eighties, but the story doesn’t feel dated, and it is really inspirational to get quilting or think about which pieces of fabric I would use to tell my family’s story.
Twenty years ago Valerie Flournoy and Jerry Pinkney created a warmhearted intergenerational story that became an award-winning perennial. Since then children from all sorts of family situations and configurations continue to be drawn to its portrait of those bonds that create the fabric of family life.
When I was a teenager, my mother sewed me a quilt, but when I moved to Wales and discovered Welsh antic quilts, my interest became a passion. These bold red and black flannel patchworks with intricate quilting seem contemporary but date back to the 19th century. I have been painting them and have learned a lot about their history and how they have provided income and artistic expression for women over the years. It’s a pleasure to see that this passion is shared by so many people worldwide, and I’m fascinated by all the stories these beautiful objects hold.
I loved the naïve storyline and the skillful appliqué quilts that the author made to illustrate the story. This book is so different from anything I have read. The illustrations have rich earthy colours.
The take on the story of Noah’s ark is brilliant, and I love Janet Bolton's truly unique voice.
I first saw the quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Whitney Museum in New York. I was wowed! I viewed the quilts as works of art and included some in a book I was doing, Art Against the Odds:From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings. But I wanted to show and tell more about the quilters. Who were these women who dreamed up incredible designs and made art out of scraps despite their poverty and hard lives? Since I never quilted I had to find out how they did it, and realized that quilting not only produced covers for their families, but expressed individual creativity, and brought women together.
Clara’s story is powerful and suspenseful. Written in the first person, she tells about her life as an enslaved twelve-year-old girl who has been separated from her Momma and sent from North Farm to the Home Plantation. Although this is fiction, it is based on the history of African American quilters. For Clara, quilting means drawing a map with stitches and fabric that ultimately becomes a “freedom map,” enabling her to escape with her friend, Young Jack, and find her Momma and freedom. The warm, luminous illustrations by James Ransome bring Clara, Young Jack, and her map to life. Ransome visited a plantation in Virginia for research, and in the process he discovered enslaved ancestors. This book is a must for readers of all ages.
An inspiring tale of creativity and determination on the Underground Railroad from Coretta Scott King Award winner James Ransome and acclaimed author Deborah Hopkinson.
Clara, a slave and seamstress on Home Plantation, dreams of freedom—not just for herself, but for her family and friends. When she overhears a conversation about the Underground Railroad, she has a flash of inspiration. Using scraps of cloth from her work in the Big House and scraps of information gathered from other slaves, she fashions a map that the master would never even recognize. . . .
From the award-winning author-illustrator team of Deborah Hopkinson…
I first saw the quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Whitney Museum in New York. I was wowed! I viewed the quilts as works of art and included some in a book I was doing, Art Against the Odds:From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings. But I wanted to show and tell more about the quilters. Who were these women who dreamed up incredible designs and made art out of scraps despite their poverty and hard lives? Since I never quilted I had to find out how they did it, and realized that quilting not only produced covers for their families, but expressed individual creativity, and brought women together.
This huge volume was another reference book for me as I researched The Quilts of Gee’s Bend. The large reproductions of the quilts showed how the women with the same material used it in different ways. Startling to see so many imaginative versions of a pattern called Housetop.Two quilts titled Flower Garden shown side by side are dazzling. And this book contains more photos of the quilters and provides information about their lives and struggles against poverty and racism. The art they produced despite their limited resources and hardships is truly an inspiration. A miracle!
I first saw the quilts of Gee’s Bend at the Whitney Museum in New York. I was wowed! I viewed the quilts as works of art and included some in a book I was doing, Art Against the Odds:From Slave Quilts to Prison Paintings. But I wanted to show and tell more about the quilters. Who were these women who dreamed up incredible designs and made art out of scraps despite their poverty and hard lives? Since I never quilted I had to find out how they did it, and realized that quilting not only produced covers for their families, but expressed individual creativity, and brought women together.
I used this adult coffee table book as a main reference for writing my children’s book of the same title. The amazing reproductions of the quilts are beautiful. The colors glow. I could see the bits of patterns –flowers, triangles, plaids – ingeniously composed like abstract paintings. Captions give the names of the quilters. And there are photos of them as well as vintage pictures. Quotes from the quilters tell their histories. One of the most touching stories was by Missouri Pettway who told that when her Daddy died her mother took his old work clothes to make a quilt “to remember him, and cover-up under it for love.” I have seen this extraordinary quilt displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and remembering the story behind it, was deeply moved.
Since the 19th century, the women of Gees Bend in southern Alabama have created stunning, vibrant quilts. Beautifully illustrated with 110 color illustrations, The Quilts of Gees Bend includes a historical overview of the two hundred years of extraordinary quilt-making in this African-American community, its people, and their art-making tradition. This book is being·released in conjunction with a national exhibition tour including The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Museum of Fine Art, Boston, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Milwaukee Art Museum, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta,…
Because I love to see how an author progresses in their storytelling abilities. Whether they continue with the same characters or move on to new worlds and new storylines, the art of writing changes as the author becomes more comfortable with their craft. I love knowing that the mind that created Dorian Grey and recorded his story also created Lord Saville. Even though they came from the same mind, they are their own entities, and the author was willing to give life to both. I love when an author is committed to the art of storytelling and not just of genre.
This book is an interesting spin on a well-known fairy tale. I really enjoyed this one because the "princess" isn't a damsel in distress and the "charming" isn't always charming. They are written as multi-dimensional characters with character flaws and imperfections. They don't instantly fall in love. They bicker and disagree, but then learn how to work together to free her family from the curse that put her in the middle of the forest. I like the reality of having to learn how to work with someone else and the growth that comes from that learning.
In Enchantment, Orson Scott Card works his magic as never before, transforming the timeless story of Sleeping Beauty into an original fantasy brimming with romance and adventure.
The moment Ivan stumbled upon a clearing in the dense Carpathian forest, his life was forever changed. Atop a pedestal encircled by fallen leaves, the beautiful princess Katerina lay still as death. But beneath the foliage a malevolent presence stirred and sent the ten-year-old Ivan scrambling for the safety of Cousin Marek's farm.
Now, years later, Ivan is an American graduate student, engaged to be married. Yet he cannot forget that long-ago day…
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies and a Professor of Jewish History in the History Department at Northwestern University. He teaches a variety of courses that include early modern and modern Jewish history; Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah; history and culture of Ukraine; and Slavic-Jewish literary encounters.
One can read this book in two ways: as a highly representative collection of Marc Chagall’s works from different periods of his almost century-long life – and as an insightful study of the meaning of Chagall’s works. Harshav’s short analytical essays of Chagall’s major paintings emphasize how Yiddish idioms and the images of traditional Jewish world of the shtetl shape much of Chagall’s later artistic endeavors. Whatever the painter from Vitebsk put on canvas, he was bringing to life his recollections of the language his spoke as a child and artifacts among which he grew up.
This is the first book to focus on Chagall's Jewish roots. Chagall is one of the most popular artists of the 20th Century, with work in every major museum in the world. The book includes 200 illustrations, many from the little-known Russian theatre works, that have rarely been published before. The Russian-born French painter Marc Chagall is recognized as one of the most significant painters and graphic artists of the 20th century. This new book, "Marc Chagall and the Lost Jewish World", is the first book on Chagall, to illustrate succinct interpretations of Chagall's world and iconography, and the nature…
My maternal great-grandparents were Irish immigrants. My paternal grandfather left Liverpool in the late 19th century to go to Australia. I’d love to know their children’s stories! Some of the families I visited as a social worker (mid-1960s) were immigrants, struggling to make sense of a new language and a new culture. I met a child who had come here alone as an illegal immigrant and had been a house slave until the social services settled her with a foster family. I met author Hanna Jansen and her many adopted children from war-torn countries. Fiction gives us many powerful stories about children forced to flee from their homes because of war, tyranny, hunger, poverty, natural disasters.
Letters from Rifka is immediately appealing because the author tells us that it is based on memories.
I was immediately drawn into the story by the engaging voice of the 12-year-old narrator, who writes her story in letter form. Rifka is a Russian Jew fleeing with her family from persecution in 1919. It is a story of a desperate flight, across Ukraine and into Poland, and from there, hopefully, to America. But, so close to freedom, Rifka is detained in a hospital for contagious diseases on Ellis Island, and may not be allowed to travel on with her family. Rifka’s character is so well drawn, her impish, positive voice so lovable, that MG readers won’t fail to love this book and care deeply about the plight of people who are forced to leave their homes forever.
From Newbery media winner Karen Hesse comes an unforgettable story of an immigrant family's journey to America.
"America," the girl repeated. "What will you do there?" I was silent for a little time. "I will do everything there," I answered.
Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her…
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