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Abbie in Stitches

Name: Abbie in Stitches
Author: Cynthia Cotten
ISBN: 9780374300043

by Cynthia Cotten, Beth Peck

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Overview

It’s the early 1800s, and Abbie’s sister, Sarah, is a proper young lady who loves needlework. She has already made a sampler displaying her neat and even stitching. But when it becomes time for Abbie to make her sampler, she despairs – she hates needlework and would much rather curl up with one of the books on Papa’s shelf. How will she ever get through the long, tedious hours of needlework? And how can she pick a subject for a picture to sew when she really doesn’t care about the sampler at all? After considering what’s really important to her, Abbie completes the sampler in a way that is all her own.

Lovely pastel illustrations accompany this story about a girl who is not afraid to speak (or sew) what’s really on her mind – that she would rather be reading.

Abbie in Stitches is a 2007 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

Growing up in western New York State in the early 1800s, Abbie would much rather read than embroider a sampler, which her mother and teacher insist she do, but she works hard after thinking of just the right picture and saying to include. Contains facts about education in the early nineteenth century.

Synopsis

It's the early 1800s, and Abbie's sister, Sarah, is a proper young lady who loves needlework. She has already made a sampler displaying her neat and even stitching. But when it becomes time for Abbie to make her sampler, she despairs - she hates needlework and would much rather curl up with one of the books on Papa's shelf. How will she ever get through the long, tedious hours of needlework? And how can she pick a subject for a picture to sew when she really doesn't care about the sampler at all? After considering what's really important to her, Abbie completes the sampler in a way that is all her own.

Lovely pastel illustrations accompany this story about a girl who is not afraid to speak (or sew) what's really on her mind - that she would rather be reading.

Children's Literature

Cotten takes us back to the early 1800s when young girls were supposed to learn needlework and produce a sampler to show their proficiency. Abbie's sister Sarah has had her beautiful sampler framed, but Abbie is reluctant to start her own. Although Sarah insists "Books are for boys," Abbie would rather read. She struggles through the winter to finish the border, letters, and numbers on her sampler but cannot decide what words and pictures to put in the center. When the idea finally comes, her fingers fly. To her family's surprise, shock, and final acceptance, she has stitched an open book displaying her name, the date, and her feelings: "I would rather read." Her reward is a new book. Peck's impressionistic double-page scenes offer sympathetic portraits of the girls and parents, along with appropriate historic interiors. The warm use of neutral hues helps set off the blues, pinks, and yellows of the clothes. Several scenes detail the sampler making while evoking the emotions Abbie feels as she struggles to produce an acceptable product and finally succeeds. A note adds considerable historic background.

About the Author, Cynthia Cotten

CYNTHIA COTTEN has written several picture books, including Snow Ponies. She lives in northern Virginia. BETH PECK has illustrated many books, including Esther Hautzig's novel A Picture of Grandmother. She lives in Menomonie, Wisconsin.

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Editorials

Children's Literature - Ken Marantz

School Library Journal

Gr 2-3-In this pleasant family story set in western New York in the early 1820s, Abbie, who is perhaps six or seven, attends sewing classes but would rather read than stitch the required sampler. To make matters worse, her older sister has set a challenging example. Done in soft focus, the double-page paintings with framed text blocks create a good sense of the period, Abbie's home life, and Mrs. Brown's Wednesday-afternoon embroidery sessions. The story spans several months of the girl's struggles with less-than-neat fabric and stitches and her final humorous statement of rebellion, sewn into the bottom of her work. Though the story focuses on the laborious needlework, no distinct picture of it or any sampler is provided-all are only suggested in indistinct form. An afterword describes the era's educational practices for girls and the emphasis placed on the embroidered sampler. A good selection for those who like reading about life in other times.-Margaret Bush, Simmons College, Boston Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

In the early 19th century in upstate New York, young Abbie despairs of ever making stitches as fine and even as her older sister Sarah's. She would much rather be reading. Every Wednesday, Abbie goes with Sarah to Mrs. Brown, who has been teaching the girls needlework for several years. Abbie is now old enough to plan her first sampler: the alphabet, her numbers, a border. She works on it through the autumn and winter, always wishing she were reading instead. In the spring, she struggles to choose the picture and the saying that will be on her sampler. When she decides on something very important to her, her teacher and parents are at first surprised but then pleased. Her parents give her not only a needlework box like Sarah's with her own thimble, scissors and needles, but a book of her very own. The illustrations have freely drawn impressionistic backgrounds and nicely detailed facial expressions and needlework bits. (sources, afterword) (Picture book. 5-8)