Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt

Title: Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
Author: Deborah Hopkinson
Illustrator: James Ransome
Type:  Fiction
Approximate Interest Level: 4th-12th
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date of Publication: 1993
ISBN: 0-679-82311-5

Synopsis: Clara is taken from her mother to work in the fields on a different plantation.  Her Aunt Rachel begins to teach her how to sew.  Eventually, she becomes skilled at sewing and is taken to work in the big house.  In the evenings, she begins to sew a quilt.  As she sews, she incorporates features of the land around her into the quilt.  It eventually becomes a map of the countryside surrounding the plantation.  Using the information she learned while making her quilt, Clara and a friend escape and make their way to the Underground Railroad.  Clara leaves the quilt behind where other slaves use it's information to escape also. 

Lesson plan link

Possible Teaching Points: 1) slavery, 2) the Underground Railroad, 3) plantation life