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
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 THEIS RAVEN and E. B. LEWIS collaborated on Circle Unbroken, a Booklist Top 10 Black History Book for Youth. Raven lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

E. B. Lewis is the acclaimed illustrator of more than fifty books for children, including the Caldecott Honor book Coming On Home Soon and several Coretta Scott King Award winners, such as Talkin' About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman and Bat Boy and His Violin. He lives in Folsom, New Jersey.

www.eblewis.com

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 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