THE ALL-TOGETHER QUILT

Community is at the heart of crafting a quilt for peace.

People of all ages, colors, sizes, and levels of expertise gather together on Fridays. Working in intergenerational pairs, they choose fabrics and shapes and decide on arrangement. The children participate fully: drawing, pinning, and sewing pieces together, under close supervision. The fabric patterns are bright, colorful, and diverse, just like the quilters themselves. The illustrations weave together the group’s activities with instructions for creating a quilt—even showing a gallery of the quilting pairs set inside stitched squares. One woman of color draws a large, striped peace symbol on a blue square, which eventually becomes the quilt’s centerpiece. The friends paint their hands and create a one-of-a-kind border that hugs this community treasure. As they gather weekly to stitch and talk, the grown-ups teach the children and the quilt grows and grows. When the quilt is completed, readers see the whole multicultural, beautiful community, full of pride and joy at the work they have done together. Rockwell’s illustrations are eye-catching and hopeful, varying layouts to control pacing but including lots of small squares. Extensive backmatter includes the real quilt this story is based on and explanations of various quilting and fabric designs. (This book was reviewed digitally with 10-by-20-inch double-page spreads viewed at actual size.)

When people teach, share, and create together, a treasure is born.