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Type of bind: Hardcover
EAN num: 9780399237492
ISBN number: 0399237496
Label: Putnam Juvenile
Manufacturer: Putnam Juvenile
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 48
Printing Date: September 08, 2005
Publishing house: Putnam Juvenile
Age index: Ages 4-8
Sale Popularity Level: 145273
Studio: Putnam Juvenile
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Product Description:
Soonie’s great-grandma was just seven years old when she was sold to a big plantation without her ma and pa, and with only some fabric and needles to call her own. She pieced together bright patches with names like North Star and Crossroads, patches with secret meanings made into quilts called Show Ways—maps for slaves to follow to freedom.When she grew up and had a little girl, she passed on this knowledge.And generations later,Soonie—who was born free—taught her own daughter how to sew beautiful quilts to be sold at market and how to read.
From slavery to freedom, through segregation, freedom marches and the fight for literacy, the tradition they called Show Way has been passed down by the women in Jacqueline Woodson’s family as a way to remember the past and celebrate the possibilities of the future. Beautifully rendered in Hudson Talbott’s luminous art, this moving, lyrical account pays tribute to women whose strength and knowledge illuminate their daughters’ lives.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book is wonderfully written and beautiful illustrated. Jacqueline Woodson has a way with words that's moving and lyrical. Hudson Talbott's illustrations capture the periods the book moves through perfectly.
It's an amazing book for people of all ages and should be read in every classroom. It covers a wide range of issues from slavery to civil rights, family histories to passing traditions down the generations.
The book itself has large print and colorful imagery on glossy pages; it's easy to read. The front cover has a picture window that peeks in on the title page.
I'd recommend this excellent book to anyone. If you have the chance, go to a Jacqueline Woodson reading and request Show Way; hearing her read it aloud is an entirely different and wonderful experience.
Rated by buyers -
This book can be used in so many ways as a teaching tools. It touches upon dialects, history, sequencing and family. If nothing else, put it in your child's collection at home.
Rated by buyers -
First, let's get this whole quilt controversy out of the way. I mean, I haven't seen this much controversy since the battles over "The Story of Ping," and "Rainbow Fish." Whether or not slaves's quilts sometimes functioned as signposts along the Underground Railroad is not the point of "Show Way," and it certainly doesn't pretend to answer the question. In a way, agonizing over that issue trivializes even more important issues: Slavery and racism, the strength of family and faith, the function of tradition (both written and oral), the beauty of art and the spoken word. Non-Academics interested in the veracity of "showing the way" quilts might be interested in "Freedom Roads: Searching for the Underground Railroad," by Joyce Hansen (Author), Gary McGowan (Author), James Ransome, and available here at Amazon.com.
I said that the book transcends the question of the "show way" quilts, and this is clear from the very first scene. The little girl (the author's great grandmother's great grandmother!) sold into slavery--and away from her enslaved family--holds "some muslim cloth her ma had given her." The cloth is her only tangible link to her origins. Quilts and cloth and sewing. The great x 4 grandmother lay on one as other slaves shared stories around a campfire, her daugher--also sold away--took part of her mama's blanket, "held it to her face to feel back home..."Sewed so fine, she was making clothes for everyone in the big house and slaves too," maybe...perhaps making herself valuable to the inhumane but omnipotent "owners."
Hudson Talbott, an incredibly gifted artist, shows this scene against fragmented newspapers advertising men and women for sale, and vignettes of slaves whipped, degraded, and hunted. Woodson and Talbott show us how the quilt patches might have contained clues about safe paths to the North. WHIle beautifully drawn, the text labels the patches rather than concretely giving an example of how it worked. FOr me, it's not the veracity of the quilt story, but the clarity with which it's told, and I think the book skips over this a little too quickly: Inquisitive kids may be left with more questions than answers. Funny, though, that for all its brevity (two pages or three) pages, this is what draws the more vociferous complaints here.
That's unfortunate, because the quilt theme goes beyond this. A quilt, after all, is a whole bigger than the sum of its parts, often made collectively, and it function here to "show the way" that preceeded the author, and that will guide her own daughter in the future. Part of that "way" is family and tradition, and Woodson's path was made by ancestors who "jumped broom" (married) and persevered through the CIvil War , sharecropping, and the 20th century fights for civil rights. There's an incredible picture showing a map of the US during the Civil War. The map is drawn as a quilt (the states are the patches), and it's ripped between north and south. Against a crimsom background, a man shoots and kills an esacping slave. On the page where we learn thatWoodson's great grandmother, Sooonie, is born, and on sseveral pages after, Hudson shows a quilt weaving in and out of the story. The quillt--and its strands of history, stop briefly when Talbot draws an all grey quilt decorated only with the quotes of those who fought for freedm and civil rights. ("We who believe in freedom cannot rest" --Ella Baker.) Its stark beauty recalls the Vietnam War Memorial in D.C. While I thought the book skipped over Reconstruction and JIm Crowism too quickly and blithely ("And when the day was finally over, wasn't hard to find a thing or two to smile about"), the newspaper and photo background the violence of segregationists suggests all that came before it. THe story concludes with the story of the author (and later, her own daughter, and the long quilt leads right to the young Woodson's bed, and the author remembers her past:
"And when I was seven,
O didn't have to work in a field
or walk in any Freedom lines,
But I still read like Georgiana and wrote like Anne..."
"Show Way" is not an easy book to review, but it is an important book, and an excellent one. It's difficult because Woodson writes a very personal and sometimes painful story that that begins with pre-Civil War slavery. I can try to empathize, but the result is no match for her experience. That's one reason we read books, and why we read them to children. She writes in prose poetry, using a voice reminiscent of an oral history, either contemporary or the voice of someone 50 or 100 years ago. Because of differences in race and culture, it's not my voice, but, as with all good writing, I found the diction and cadence flowing easily after a few reads. Very highly recommended for schools as well as home, the book is stunning.
NOTE: The illustrations are a veritable "quilt" of media: Watercolors, chalk, muslin, denim, work shirts, ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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I am sadded to see and hear this quilt code myth perpetuated. We need to be responsible adults and not introduce our children to untruths. There is no factual evidence supporting the myth of a quilt code showing people the way to freedom. I would rate this book a 0 for not being honest, there was no category for 0.
Rated by buyers -
I use this book in a college beginning costume sewing class. I introduce the value of traditional (usually denigrated) "women's work". Most of the time students have not heard of the quilt-underground railway connection but are immediately intrigued by the importance of the secret codes. We concentrate on the log cabin pattern and the various designs of that block. Then they design their own block and have to figure out the sizes of the strips and how they are cut and then sewn together. Using this wonderful book introduces them to an important story of our country, women's contributions to history, and the steps involved in planning a sewing project.
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