Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson is about an enslaved girl named Clara who works in the fields with her best friend, Young Jack. She couldn’t last in the fields so the person raising her, Aunt Rachel, got her a job in the big house as a seamstress. The sewing room was near the kitchen so she could hear the cook talking. She said it would be crazy for one of them to run away because they’d get caught.

The author wrote what cook said in the way she imagines enslaved people talking at that time, and I think it’s fun to read out loud that way because it helps me imagine the characters.  She wrote,”’Crazy, runnin’ away,’ muttered Cook as she beat up some batter. “Where you gon’ get to ‘cept lost in the swamp?’”

There were a bunch of people talking in the quarters, and Clara knew it was
because someone ran away. It ended up being Young Jack, but five days later they caught him. After that, he didn’t smile at Clara like he used to, but one day they went to the top of a hill like they usually did, and Clara started drawing in the dirt with a stick. Young Jack helped her, and they began making a map.

Clara really wanted to be free, so she made a quilt that was like the dirt map that could lead her to freedom. It was so secretive that the masters didn’t even
suspect that it was a map. They just thought it was a nice quilt, but Aunt Rachel knew it was a map. She wished Clara and Jack good luck because she knew they were going to try to run away. They didn’t need to bring the quilt with them because they had it all memorized by the time they were ready to go. They left the quilt behind so other enslaved people could use it to find freedom.

I enjoyed this book because it showed how people lived long ago. Historical
fiction is one of my favorite things to read, and I especially like reading about
people who could have been my ancestors.