Books That Honor Family Heritage
The Keeping Quilt & The Blessing Cup
Patricia Polacco is one of the most creative and prolific author-illustrators in the field of children's literature. Her picture books feature essential subject matter such as family stories and traditions, history, autobiography, twice exceptional (2e) students, great educators, tall tales, contemporary social issues, and holiday stories straight from the heart. She champions multiculturalism, diversity, and tolerance as hallmarks of American democracy. Polacco successfully mines her own experiences with uneven intellectual development. She salutes the resiliency and productivity of gifted youths who succeed in remarkable ways despite learning disabilities. In her autobiography for children, Still Fire Talking (Richard C. Owen Publishers, 2014), Polacco describes her own childhood anguish.
I had difficulty reading. Math was and still is almost impossible for me. I knew that inside I was very smart, but at school I felt stupid and slow. (p. 13)
Thank you, Mr. Falker (Philomel Books, 1998) and The Art of Miss Chew (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2012) are just two of Dr. Polacco’s many picture books that honor extraordinary teachers who guide gifted youths experiencing learning challenges. Polacco reveals her personal struggle with dyslexia as a student; yet, she also uses memoir to reveal her grandmother’s gift for “fire talking” (storytelling) and how that precious talent shaped her own life. She did not publish her first picture book, Meteor! (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1987) until she was 41 years old! She has never looked back or slowed down. She is the creator of well over 70 picture books most of which remain in print.
The Keeping Quilt is a superb introduction to family storytelling and genealogy for children. It is perhaps Polacco’s most enduring work. She digs deep into her own heritage to write and illustrate a story about immigrants, family solidarity, and changing times. The story begins when Dr. Polacco’s maternal great-grandmother emigrates from Russia to the United States. Anna arrives in New York City with few possessions, chiefly her dress and a red babushka (headscarf). As she adapts to her new land and outgrows her clothes, her mother and neighbor women create a quilt from her dress and fragments of clothing that belong to her extended family: Uncle Vladimir’s shirt; Aunt Havalah’s nightdress. Anna’s babushka becomes the border of the quilt. Through new generations, the quilt becomes a symbol of love and life in a single Jewish-American family. It serves as a tablecloth for dinners to begin Shabbat (the Sabbath). Anna’s husband proposes to her while sitting on the quilt spread out as a lawn picnic cloth. It functions as their wedding chuppah (canopy) and serves as the blanket into which they wrap their first child. The quilt serves again as a tablecloth for Anna’s 98th birthday celebration, and warms her as she spends her last moments on earth. Each of five generations of Patricia Polacco’s family use the quilt for special occasions and even play for the children. As a child, Patricia used the quilt as a matador’s cape while imagining herself as a bull fighter and as a tent draped over a clothesline in her inventive jungle expeditions.
The original 1988 edition of The Keeping Quilt ended with the heirloom quilt serving as a chuppah for Polacco’s marriage ceremony and as a welcoming blanket for the birth of her own first child, Traci Denise. The 25th Anniversary edition of The Keeping Quilt begins three years later when the author wraps her second child, baby son Steven John, in the family quilt. Traci Denise and Steven John used the family quilt as a table linen for birthday celebrations and as a cape for superheroes in their dress-up play. Years pass and again the family quilt serves as the chuppah for both the marriages of author's children and as the swaddling cloth at the births of their own children.
The artistic design of The Keeping Quilt is unique. The horizontal (as opposed to vertical) format of the cover and pages suggests a family album or scrapbook. Polacco’s characteristic bursts of bold colors are reserved solely for the original quilt fabrics that resemble Chagall-like cuttings of flowers, animals, and silhouettes. All the people and events are rendered in charcoal, perfectly capturing the appearance of century-old family photographs. The contrast is both symbolic and beautiful.
More than a quarter century after Patricia Polacco shared Anna's immigrant story and the creation of her family's storytelling quilt, she revisits Anna's early years in a second picture book, The Blessing Cup, that serves as both a prequel and a companion to The Keeping Quilt.
The Blessing Cup opens while Anna is a young girl living in a small Jewish village in Russia along with her Papa, mother, and younger sister, Magda. Polacco weaves history and Russian Jewish observances into her story. At each Shabbat, Anna and Magda ask their mother Rachel to tell them about the miraculous tea set that is used for special family gatherings. Years earlier, Rachel had received the tea set as a wedding gift from a beloved aunt along with an accompanying note about its special magic.
Anyone who drinks from it has a blessing from God. They will never know a day of hunger. Their lives will always have flavor. They will know love and joy and they will never be poor.
All too soon, Russia’s Czar mandates that all Jews must leave Russia. Anna's family begins the painful task of packing their meager possessions and the arduous trek to find a welcoming new homeland. Anna's father becomes seriously ill. A compassionate doctor provides a safe haven for her family and begins the rehabilitation of her father’s strength. He uses his medical skills to fit Anna for eyeglasses and he purchases precious passage tickets and papers that will allow her family to reach America.
Out of profound gratitude for all the things the doctor has done for her family, Rachel gives him the beloved tea set complete with God's blessing. She keeps just one cup from the set so that her own family may continue to share its miracle.
Anna's family at long last reaches America. Throughout their lives Anna's family continue to drink from the “Blessing Cup” and, like the family quilt, it is passed from mother to daughter on each recipient's wedding day.
The artistic design of The Blessing Cup is similar to The Keeping Quilt in that it features meticulous details in charcoal with Polacco’s signature use of vivid colors reserved for the original tea set, the blessing cup, and Anna's babushka.
Fittingly, Patricia Polacco won the Sidney Taylor Book Award in 1988 for The Keeping Quilt and received the same honor in 2014 for The Blessing Cup. The Association of Jewish Libraries bestows this honor upon the creator of the best book of the year for juvenile readers.
Home Activities
Encourage children to draw the image of a quilt or create a collage that features images of treasured objects of their own family members.
During the COVID-19 pandemic many adults used spare moments to write their own memoirs and family histories. Do contemporary children have within their families heirlooms that celebrate their heritage? Illustrate or scan photographs of such artifacts and write the history of each that may serve as a new family album.
After children have read The Keeping Quilt and The Blessing Cup, ask them to use verbal or visual (e.g., a Venn diagram) means to compare and contrast the books.
Today, Patricia Polacco’s original family quilt and providential teacup are not the same as they were during Anna’s lifetime. Invite students to create one or two picture books using Polacco’s folk art style that reveal where these treasures may be found today.
*This review was adapted from Flack, J. D. (2015) Patricia Polacco and the three C’s: Creativity, critical thinking, and curriculum. Journal 2015, pp. 29-41. Illinois Association for Gifted Children.
Polacco, Patricia. The Keeping Quilt. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988, 2013.
Polacco, Patricia. The Blessing Cup. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.
