Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Illustrator: Hudson Talbott
Genre: Multicultural, Historical Fiction, Nonfiction
Awards: Newbery Honor (2006), South Carolina Children's Book Award Nominee (2007-2008), Young Hoosier Book Award Nominee (2008-2009), ALA Notable Children's Book (2006), Reading Rainbow Program Selection (2006), NCSS/CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People (2006), NCTE/CLA Notable Children's Book in the English Language Arts (2006), AISLE Read-Aloud Books Too Good To Miss (2006), Capitol Choices Noteworthy Book for Children and Teens (2006), CCBC Choices (2006), Pennsylvania Young Reader's Choice Award Nominee (2007), Georgia Children's Book Award Nominee (2008), Utah Beehive Book Award Nominee (2007)
Grade(s): 1st-3rd
Summary: Show Way is a story about a generation growing up during the time of slavery. It starts with a great-grandmother, Big Mama, who had raised many slave children on the land where she worked. Big Mama learned to sew with needles she had taken from the "big house" and thread she had dyed with red berries. Big Mama would sew during the times of rest and would teach her many children to sew "stars and moons and roads." Soon, Big Mama had sewed a quilt that many thought was the map to freedom, the way she sewed it. As generations passed, the quilt got handed down and each child would learn to sew. Many different quilts were made by many different people and any quilt that was sewed like Big Mama's was called a "Show Way." The quilts were given this name because many slaves felt that it showed them the way to freedom by looking at the sewn "stars and moons and roads." As generations had passed, soon the slaves were free, each raising a child and teaching them to sew. Even when slavery had ended, the family of Show Way continued to live on the land they once slaved and continued to make a living off of their cotton fields. The book ends with the author describing to her own child how she has raised her like her ancestors before her and how she is going to teach her to sew a Show Way quilt.
My Thoughts: Like Goin' Someplace Special, I felt that this book is a fantastic multicultural book to have in my classroom. I feel like it captures the slavery time period beautifully by tying in culturally relevant characteristics of a generation of a single family. This book also has repetition which also enriches the author's way of showing culture and tradition. This book is also illustrated beautifully and each page is bordered with famous pictures of the slavery time period. I will definitely have this book in my classroom library for years to come.
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