Horn Book (Thu Apr 01 00:00:00 CST 1999)

The first edition of this picture-book memoir ended with Polacco holding her first-born daughter. Now she's added nine additional pages, which show her two children using the quilt in the same ways that their ancestors did--during play and to commemorate important family occasions. The new ending blends seamlessly with the rest of the story, but the white paper has less of an old-fashioned feel than the original creamy background.

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

This 10th-anniversary edition of Polacco's family story about a quilt made from an immigrant Jewish family's clothing from their Russian homeland "adds a few squares to the original story with expanded text and art," noted <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">PW. Ages 4-8. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(May)

School Library Journal

K-Gr 3--The changes in this revised edition of a book originally published in 1988 are subtle. The story recounts Polacco's great-grandmother's arrival in this country from Eastern Europe. Her dress and babushka become part of a quilt that has been handed down from generation to generation in the author's family. This book is special for the values it conveys, for the family traditions and the changes to them that it describes, and for the intergenerational love it portrays. Although alterations to the text are slight, eight new pages have been added, as the author traces the presence of the quilt at the birth of her own children and the death of her mother, and ends with the promise of continuing the cycle. The endpapers are enhanced with more decoration and the pages are white as opposed to cream colored, resulting in a brighter, cheerier mood. As before, only the quilt is shown in color; black-and-white pencil drawings in Polacco's distinctive, folksy style convey the drama as it unfolds. The portraits are wonderfully expressive, depicting both joy and sadness as the occasion demands. Do these revisions warrant purchase of this new edition if a collection already holds sufficient copies of the old one? Probably not. However, those libraries that do not already own multiple copies of this wonderful book will want to take this opportunity to stock their shelves.--Linda Greengrass, Bank Street College Library, New York City