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THE MOUNTAINS OF QUILT by Nancy Willard

THE MOUNTAINS OF QUILT

By

Pub Date: Oct. 10th, 1987
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

A fey literary tale in the spirit of Sandburg or Thurber. ""My grandmother"" makes crazy quilts. In the clouds above, the Magician of the Mountains of Cleveland meets his colleagues from the Mountains of Sandusky, Elyria, and Detroit for lunch on Tuesdays. He has a spell for making the meal--including leftovers for the magpie that commutes to Grandmother's--but ""the spell was old and in need of repair,"" and so makes errors. To entertain his friends, the Magician makes a flying carpet, very small and undisciplined, though ""it would bring you a cup of tea in the morning, if you got up and made the tea first."" The carpet escapes; the magpie takes it to Grandmother, who sews it into her quilt. Transported by the quilt and seeing through magic spectacles, she lunches with the magicians once, then returns to her former life, where she has a fine story for her grandchild. Willard's delicate yet beguilingly down-to-earth prose is illustrated with wit and good humor, in a style consciously childlike in its simplicity, with lots of white space and eccentric borders that seem to pay homage to crazy quilts. Everyone seems to have had fun with this lighthearted production. Good to read aloud or for young readers to read themselves.