Show Way

 

Title: Show Way

Author: Jacqueline Woodson

Illustrated by: Hudson Talbott

Published by: The Penguin Group

First, the pictures in this book are fantastic. I just couldn't stop looking at the pictures. The start of the story got me hooked. I couldn't imagine at seven years being without my grandmother or any of my family. Yet this child is sold and sent on a journey of life without having a choice. The book itself is created to get you hooked by the way the front cover is made. The quilt has a cut out and the girl in the middle with the candle signify  to use the quilt to find your way to a safe place. Or that is how I took it after I read the book.

I wished that my family would have had passed down from generations the stories of our families. African American families see the significance of  passing down the stories and the history of their ancestors hardships and what makes them have strong family ties.

This book is significant of the trials and tribulations of seven generations of slaves that found comfort in the sewing of their quilts and helped others by using their god-given talents to set a foundation for freedom. 

The details in the pictures are truly amazing. On the first page you can see the texture in the muslin and the thread has vibrant colors. The watercolors on the pages of the stories are such great details. And for them to lay the quilt out to dry at night (or that's what the master thought) and the slaves would disappear and read the quilts as they traveled in the moonlight. I just love how she divides the pages up into triangle segments and still tells a story with few words.Oh, my god I just realized that it isn't triangles but the quilt patterns. This makes it work because she has created a flow from the beginning of the story. Also, the dialectic that she uses in authentic to the way that African American people speak. I love how she says, "Had herself a baby girl an named that child Mathis May. Loved that baby up so. Yes, she loved that baby up.

This is a very emotional story that I could read over and over. And what amazes me most was how she ended the book, the quilt with all of her ancestors on the quilt pieces and then I realized that it was her and her daughter as she begins to tell her daughter the story, "Now, Soonie was your great-great-grandma. And when Soonie's great-grandma was seven.....

There is so much of her soul and history put into this book that it just amazes me. I think of all of the books that I have read that this one is my favorite. Because I am all about family and that is what this book is about.