Sweet Clara And The Freedom Quilt

Title: Sweet Clara And The Freedom Quilt
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrator: James Ransome
Genre: Historical Fiction

Summary
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt is told from the point of view of a young girl named Clara. She is a slave girl who was separated from her family before she was twelve years old because Home Planatation needed another field hand. Clara discovered that the field work was very tough on her body and that she would not be able to do it for long. Aunt Rachel convinced "Missus" to let Clara come work in the Big House instead of out in the field. During the day Clara would work in the Big House and at night Aunt Rachel showed her how to sew. Clara became a wonderful seamstress. Clara knew that the Underground Railroad would lead her to freedom, however, she did not know how to find it. She came up with the idea of piecing together scraps of cloth with scraps of information gathered from other slaves to create a map that would lead to the Underground Railroad. After completing the quilt and memorizing each piece on the quilt, Clara and Jack left Home Plantation in a dark thunderstorm. She finds her mom and the rest of her family and leads them to freedom as well. Clara left the quilt at Home Plantation so that other slaves could use it to make their escape and eventually become free.

Classroom Connection
1)This book would be good to read and incorporate in a lesson on the Civil War and slavery. It could help to address the issues dealing with the injustices of slavery during that specific time period.

2)Students could also make their own quilt as a class. The class could decide on a topic that they wanted to incorporate in the quilt and each student could make their own piece of the quilt and then the class could put it together and display it for everyone to see.