The Weaver - Thacher Hurd

Illustrated by Elisa Kleven
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010
$16.99
32 pages
Rating: 5
Endpapers: Midnight blue

This is a lovely, gentle, very special book. Although the words and illustrations are rendered by two different people, they work beautifully...oh so beautifully...together.

A weaver sits above the earth, watching and weaving. She uses parts of the universe as the threads on her loom, she dyes them the colors of the morning. She weaves in friendship and family, happiness and sadness, anger and love. And as night approaches, her masterpiece complete, she spreads it across the sky and lets it gently fall and settle across the world - warming us, comforting us, and holding our memories.

"Looking down on the world,
the weaver sees
a smile on someone's face,
a hug between friends,
babies crying and then held warm
in their parents arms."

I've been an Elisa Kleven fan for a long time. I can remember reading and sharing Snowsong Whistling to my very first college class at COA. A few years ago at the Reading the World Conference at the University of San Francisco I participated in a workshop run by Elisa Kleven. I've read Ernst and Wish, Abuela and City by the Bay over and over and over. I wish the pages in her books were bigger so that I could closely examine every minute detail.

Poetry. Sheer poetry. Words and pictures alike. Every page is beautiful. This is the perfect gift for a newborn or toddler.

Thacher Hurd's website.
Elisa Kleven's website.

Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast: interviews the author and illustrator.

The Spider Weaver - Margaret Musgrove

A Legend of Kente Cloth
Illustrated by Julia Cairns
Blue Sky Press, 2001
32 pages
Rating: 5
Endpapers: 9 patches - kente cloth in two patterns and the black and yellow spider

This gorgeous book, painted with greens, yellows, and blues of every hue, tells the legend of how seventeenth century Ghanan weavers discovered a spider's web so beautifully woven that they sought to recreate it.

So yes, the illustrations are lovely. And so is the writing. Musgrove tells the story simply, but uses word choices and literary elements that are wonderful models for writers. For example: dashes: "And everyone -- from the kings of the Ashanti people to the lowliest apprentice -- wore it." And similes: "The light from his lantern had fallen on an amazing sight, glowing like moonbeams agains the midnight sky" (and note the great verbs!).

WORD CHOICES:
detached
held fast
crumpled in my hands
doubtful
the beginnings of a new masterpiece
stood still in admiration
in the blink of an eye

PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES TO BEGIN SENTENCES:
Early the next morning
Past the tall silk cottons and papaya trees
On this night
In no time
In time

Also included are an interesting afterward and a prnunciation guide.