Pieces: A Year in Poems & Quilts

Citation

Hines, Anna Grossnickle. Pieces: A Year in Poems & Quilts. New York: Greenwillow Books, 2001. ISBN 0060559608

Poetic Elements

This poet has richly combined and reflected the imagery of her words with the quilted illustrations in the book. The poems themselves cover the seasons of the year and are dripping with figurative language, alliteration, and imagery. Lines such as “...bursting out on bare, brown branches...” and “...bright, bold, biting, busy green...” are indicative of the alliteration that is present throughout many of the poems. Personification is beautifully described as “...the creek bubbles in celebration...”, “...green sleeps in winter...”, and “...trees are wearing scarlet gowns and golden crowns...” The poet doesn't follow specific rhyme patterns in her poetry, but there is rhyme present in some of them. She uses the placement of the words themselves on the page to convey more meaning to the words. In To Each His Own she has the words scattered over the page to look like leaves falling through the air, which is a thoughtful display that adds visual meaning to the words.

Appeal and Overall Quality

One of the neatest aspects to this book of poetry is that the poet, clearly a creative person by nature, also made a quilt square to go with each poem. She chose the colors and the layout for each illustrative quilt piece, and the thought that went into the color scheme, the picture, and the design is evident. The colors in the illustrations change from whites, to greens, to browns and reds, back to whites as the poems themselves move through the season and through the year. An added bonus to this book is an explanation at the end of how the poet was led to participate in such a project. It also has a selected biography that points towards more information on quilting. Many of the illustrations show the material laid out and displayed, but not sewn, on one side of the page while the opposite page shows the final result all sewn together. Readers will appreciate the beauty of the words and the poetry, but there is ample room for discussion and conversation regarding the accompanying illustrations.

Spotlight Poem

Do You Know Green?

Green sleeps in winter

waiting

quiet

still

beneath the snow

and last year's stems

and old dead leaves

resting up for spring

and then...

Green comes...

tickling the tips

of twiggy tree fingers

Psst!

Psst! Psst!

poking up as tiny

slips of baby grass

Ping!

Ping! Ping!

springing up as coiled

skunk cabbage leaves

Pop!

Pop! Pop!

bursting out on bare

brown branches

Pow!

Pow! Pow!

Brand new baby yellow green

bright bold biting busy green

until it seems

everywhere one goes

green grows.

Follow Up Activity

The book lends itself to a discussion on the seasons and the changes that accompany each season...the colors, the physical changes, etc. I would present this poem to the class and read it out loud first. Then I would have them read it with me in a choral setting. Finally, I would have them read it in small groups, with some reading the sound effects (Pop! Ping! Psst!) while others read the other lines. We would focus on the rich and energetic verbs, onomatopoeia, and personification before asking them to write one in a similar fashion about their own favorite color.

Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a series of quilted designs worthy of exhibition, Hines (My Own Big Bed) illustrates the theme of this deceptively simple, unique collection of poems: "Pieces of the seasons/ appear and disappear/ in a patchwork pattern/ making up a year." Her language, both playful and adroit, allows readers to see familiar seasonal changes anew. "Good Heavens," for instance, depicts a spring lawn as "astronomical/ with dandelion blooms" that fill the green sky with "a thousand suns/ and then/ a thousand moons." Hines varies her quilt designs as often as she varies her poems' rhythm and rhyme schemes. In one of the longer poems, "Do You Know Green?," the words trickle down the page, much like the light that filters through the trees in the accompanying quilt; both the poem's construction and the long vertical tree trunks emphasize the forest's height and grandeur. Meanwhile, abstract quilts like the one featuring hundreds of flowered squares in "Misplaced?" stress frivolity--in this case, a joke involving a flowerbed where "bloomers are not sleepyheads." An appendix explains Hines's meticulous quilting process. Wearing two hats, Hines takes her quilter's stash of fabric swatches and her wordsmith's metaphors for memories of the seasons, and pieces together a unified, artistic whole. An outstanding book for aspiring quilters or anyone at all. Ages 5-up.

From School Library Journal

Gr 1-4-Hines has illustrated her mostly free-verse poems about the seasons with quilts. The selections, which describe weather, gardens, and animals, are set against her patchwork designs. The fabric art, done in a broad range of colors, are mostly representational, picturing animals and landscapes. While a few are striking, those that depend on a fabric's print or the quilting pattern come across flatly in reproduction. The poems are nicely descriptive, but not distinguished. The most interesting part for readers may be the two pages at the end that describe the quilting process, with a short bibliography. The quilts in the book are Hines's first, and took her several years to complete. They will certainly inspire young quilters or artists to try something similar, but as a collection of illustrated poems, Pieces fails to stand out.-Nina Lindsay, Oakland Public Library, CA

From Booklist

Ages 5-9. This lovely book combines the intricacies of quilting with the wonders of the changing seasons. Though it is older readers and adults who will appreciate the skill that has gone into the artwork, children will simply revel in the colorful pictures that make up Hines' quilted squares. For the spring, a rippled quilt in melting-snow shades of white and blue captures the watery beauty of the season. In autumn, reds, golds, and browns show leaves "as pretty as snowflakes." Perhaps the most powerful spread is a winter scene in which naked limbs of trees and dark, flowered underbrush are set against a background of white. With such impressive pictures, its easy to lose sight of the poems, but they are quite nice in their simplicity: "Sometimes in winter / while I'm sleeping / through the night / inside the house / all snug and tight, / outside / the world is turning white." A two-page spread at the book's conclusion tells "the story behind the quilts," detailing in words and photos how they were made. A bibliography is appended. A thoughtful, lovely offering. Ilene Cooper