A quilt becomes a family album in The Quilt of Our Memories, a heartfelt picture book by author Desirée Acevedo and illustrator Víctor Jaubert, translated from the Spanish by Jon Brokenbrow.
"It was all my great-great-grandmother's idea," begins the narrator, whose identity is revealed at the end. "Every woman in the family would stitch a square for a very special quilt." Acevedo's prose resembles a well-trod litany as the narrator recites each contributor and the significance of the image on her quilt block: a seashell from grandmother Bianca, who "loved to take long walks along the seashore," a carnation from a great-great-aunt who wore the flowers in her hair, and so on. Though the quilt has been created by "the women of the family," narrator Mateo wants to experience "the wonderful gift of belonging to [his] family history." He adds a block depicting his infant daughter and bequeaths the quilt to her.
Jaubert's buoyant illustrations fittingly brim with color and texture. As the text moves through five generations of the narrator's family, Jaubert includes subtle nods to the passage of time, such as the pin curls worn by the narrator's great-great-grandmother, a tabletop radio behind his great-grandmother's sewing chair, and the bell-bottom pants and groovy vest shown on aunt Pia. Jaubert depicts each person's quilt square on one side of each spread; the squares mirror hues and visual motifs from the illustration on the opposite page; for instance, the background fabric of grandmother Bianca's block features waves and bubbles.
Acevedo and Jaubert have created a moving testament to the ability of physical objects to travel across history, laden with meaning. --Stephanie Appell, freelance reviewer