Customer Reviews

Beauty, Her Basket

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BEAUTY, HER BASKET is a beautifully drawn story of a young girl's visit with her grandmother and the story of her African heritage and how to weave a sea grass basket. Using acrylics for the full-color art, Cozbi A. Cobrera has done an exceptional job of bring this book to life.

In the story, a young girl (never named) shares the landscape and beauty of the stories shared with her grandmother and cousin Victor. The plot centers around basketry and its African origins as well as other skills such as fishing and rice farming which slaves brought to America from Africa.

Though I loved the lessons taught in the story and how it teaches children to appreciate their ancestry and the beauty around them, I simply didn't "get" the title of the book, even after reading it three times. Because of this, I couldn't totally enjoy it and spent a lot of time trying to figure out if Beauty, Her Basket was the name of the basket since the others mentioned in the book were also called the same thing. Perhaps, it's in a native patios/dialect that I just didn't understand? I'm not sure, but I think children will have a problem understanding the correlation between the title, basket, and the story, but in spite of that, will be delighted with the art work.

Reviewed by Tee C. Royal
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers

The book gives a great description of African heritage and how their culture has been passed down from generation to generation. However, we did not understand where the title tied into the story, it never tells why they call the basket "Beauty, Her Basket". We feel that young children may be very confused by this, but they would enjoy the beautiful pictures throughout the story. Children might not be able to understand the dialect because it is so different from what most are accustomed to hearing. In a classroom this book would be great to teach about the differences in cultures, and how things have been passed down from generations.