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Children's Literature in Education

, Volume 44, Issue 1, pp 29–43 | Cite as

“Texts Like a Patchwork Quilt”: Reading Picturebooks About Slavery

  • Paula T. Connolly
Original Paper
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Abstract

This article examines narrative strategies present in picturebooks about slavery that feature quilts. Against the depicted dangers of slavery, images of quilts serve to offer a sense of hope and in that way they provide a means of discussing difficult subjects with very young readers. As a central image in these texts, the quilt is variously represented as an artifact of remembrance, an image of hope, a type of testimony, and a sign of safety. This article focuses on a selection of texts to explore how verbal and visual images work to present and mitigate issues of historical violence. Additionally, the ways the image of the quilt intra- and extra-textually functions as a metanarrative comment on the construction of picturebooks are examined.

Keywords

Picturebooks Slavery Quilts 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of EnglishUniversity of North Carolina at CharlotteCharlotteUSA

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