Circle Unbroken

by Margot Theis Raven, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)

Overview

As she teaches her granddaughter to sew a traditional sweetgrass basket, a grandmother weaves a story, going back generations to her grandfather's village in faraway Africa. There, as a boy, he learned to make baskets so tightly woven they could hold the rain. Even after being stolen away to a slave ship bound for America, he remembers what he learned and passes these memories on to his children - as they do theirs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312376031
Publisher:	Square Fish
Publication date:	12/26/2007
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	48
Sales rank:	688,583
Product dimensions:	10.75(w) x 9.55(h) x 0.18(d)
Lexile:	AD1050L (what's this?)
Age Range:	4 - 8 Years

About the Author

Margot Raven and E. B. Lewis collaborated on Circle Unbroken, a Booklist Top 10 Black History Book for Youth. Their most recent picture book was Night Boat to Freedom, published by FSG in 2006. The author lives in Charleston, South Carolina. The artist, a Caldecott Honor Medalist for Coming on Home Soon, lives in Folsom, New Jersey.

Reading Group Guide

In Margot Theis Raven's Circle Unbroken: The Story of a Basket and Its People, a grandmother shares family stories with her granddaughter while demonstrating the techniques of making the famous Gullah coiled basket. In West Africa, Grandmother's "old-timey" grandfather lived on the riverbanks near rice fields where he learned the art of weaving baskets. When grandfather was captured and transported to South Carolina as a slave, he continued sewing baskets in the traditional way. Today, tourists to the Sea Islands in South Carolina can buy baskets woven by descendants of slaves brought to America. An author's note provides excellent details about the history of the sweetgrass "coil" or Gullah basket, its history on Africa's West Coast, and its journey to the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia.

1. Students can research recent problems with the growth of urban areas and the availability of the reeds needed for basketmaking. What impact will this have on the continuity of the cultural traditions of the Sea Islands?

2. Research the Gullah dialect. Discuss how the slave trade led to the development of Creole languages blending English and African languages.

3. Have students find the Sea Islands, South Carolina, on a map and discover more about their geography. Construct a Venn diagram comparing the two types of islands: erosion remnant and barrier. Finally, the class can compare the geography of the Sea Islands with the West African countries of Sierra Leone and Senegal.

4. Have students try the different basketmaking techniques of plaiting and coiling. Compare and contrast the materials and techniques of traditional Native American and Gullah basketmaking. Linda Yamane's Weaving a California Tradition: A Native America Basketmaker (Lerner, 1997), with photographs by Dugan Aguilar, is a good resource.

Editorial Reviews

Gracefully constructed...as intricate as the baskets and the history to which it pays tribute.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Clear poetic words and exquisite watercolor illustrations depict how the small circular basket holds the big circle of African-American history....Lewis' astonishing pictures combine the panoramas of upheaval and war with portraits of individuals in small circles weaving and passing on their heritage in craft and story.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“Raven's text masterfully frames several hundred years of African-American history within the picture-book format. Lewis's double-page watercolor images are poignant and perfectly matched to the text and mood.” —School Library Journal

“In solemn Gullah cadences, an old woman passes on to a grandchild centuries of history embodied in the Sea Islands' distinctive sweetgrass baskets...Powerfully evoking the passage of successive generations linked by the ancient skill.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

In the opening scene, an African-American woman encircles the granddaughter who sits on her lap, guiding her fingers in the sewing of sweetgrass baskets. The circle motif weaves in and out of Raven's (Angels in the Dust) poetic tale, referring not just to loving embraces but to the tight, round coils of a Gullah basket, and the ties that bind past to present. Through the story of the girl's "old-timey grandfather," Grandma entwines the history of the Africans' capture with the history of Gullah baskets-which are still crafted today in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia. The girl's African ancestors proudly made baskets so tight they could hold rain, "but the wide, deep ocean held the rain, too, and the rain fell bitter as your grandfather's tears when the slave men came and bound him in chains." Raven's lyrical prose resonates with such emotional connections, and traces the weaving skill as it passes from the Africans to the captives in America to today's roadside craftsmen and women: "And when your fingers talk just right that circle will go out and out again-past slavery and freedom, old ways and new, and your basket will hold the past." Echoing the almost epic style of the text, Lewis's (Joe-Joe's First Flight) watercolors depict lush scenes of Africa that fade to a doleful, monochromatic scene of capture; the Civil War unfolds as a sea of blue-coated soldiers blurred against a gray-blue sky. With repeated readings, children will begin to absorb the many layers of this gracefully constructed tale, as intricate as the baskets and the history to which it pays tribute. Ages 6-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

K-Gr 5-A book about the origins of the intricate technique and art of basket making as preserved by the Africans who were brought to America as slaves and their descendants. A grandmother guides her granddaughter's hands as she teaches her the art of basket sewing. When the child asks her how she came to make baskets, the woman's answer harkens back to a time when one of their ancestors, the child's "old-timey grandfather," is being initiated into manhood in a village in Africa. Part of the rite involves being able to make a grass basket woven or coiled so tightly that it can hold water. Soon after this event, the young man is captured, transported to America, and sold as a slave at an auction in Charleston, SC. During the day he works the fields, but by night he makes baskets, and this skill is passed down from one generation to the next. Raven's text masterfully frames several hundred years of African-American history within the picture-book format. Lewis's double-page, watercolor images are poignant and perfectly matched to the text and mood. A section at the end of the book offers information about the "coil" or "Gullah" baskets, as they are known today, as well as the regions of Africa where this art form originated. This title works as both a story and informational book; consider it as a first purchase.-Mary N. Oluonye, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

In solemn Gullah cadences, an old woman passes on to a grandchild centuries of history embodied in the Sea Islands' distinctive sweetgrass baskets, as in equally solemn watercolors, Lewis takes the tale from an ancestral African village, through the Middle Passage and slavery days, to changes brought by the automobile and distant modern wars. Powerfully evoking the passage of successive generations linked by the ancient skill to create rice-winnowing baskets or "sewn" so tightly that they can "hold the rain," this elaborates on the equally poetic, but briefer and more impressionistic, account of the same history in Sandra Belton's Beauty, Her Basket (2003). (afterword, bibliography) (Picture book. 7-10)

Kirkus Reviews