Beauty, Her Basket Book

Sea grass basket . . .

Sweetgrass basket . . .

Beauty, Her Basket.

"I stick my nose inside the basket as far as it can go. I want to smell its secrets."

Sandra Belton and Cozbi A. Cabrera invite you to the Sea Islands, where a young girl, her cousin Victor, and their Nana are spending the summer together. There will be stories to share and pictures to see and secrets worth knowing. Secrets about these times and the old times and tomorrow, too.

Publishers Weekly

Spending her summer with her Nana, a member of the Sea Islands' Gullah community, a girl learns how the tradition of weaving baskets from seagrass represents her ancestors' indomitable spirit in the face of slavery. "So much ugly in the slave times," Nana tells her grandchildren, explaining the name of the eponymous basket. "Much too much ugly. But the basket like the flower-always a child of beauty. No matter what." The text is leisurely paced and lengthy, with much of Nana's dialogue written in a lilting Gullah dialect (the narrator speaks standard English). But the book's rewards are well worth the close attention the writing demands. Belton (From Miss Ida's Porch) has a lovely way with a phrase: Nana "makes her hand dance," when she wants to beckon the narrator's less-than-beloved cousin, also a summer visitor; as the girl struggles to craft one of the pedestal-like baskets, she notices that "every time I lean close to pull the grass tight, I can smell the sea on my hands." Cabrera follows suit with naif acrylic pictures that immerse readers in the locale's earthy exoticism. The illustrations make all of the elements of the story-from the moist, salty coastal air to Nana's enveloping embraces-feel magical and almost palpable. A quiet treasure. Ages 5-up. (Jan.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.