Poetry Friday: Mother Earth and Her Children
Friday, February 1, 2008 at 02:41AM 
The illustrations in this rhyming picture book won an unusual award: Best in Show at the 2006 International Quilt Festival in Houston. They began as a single quilt inspired by quilt artist Sieglinde Schoen Smith's favorite children's book, Etwas von den Wurzelkindern ("Something About the Root Children"). Written by Sibylle von Olfers, it was originally published in Germany in 1906. Mother Earth and Her Children: A Quilted Fairy Tale (Breckling Press, 2007) is the English translation of that book, illustrated entirely with details from Smith's award-winning quilt. Yes, that cover image is from the quilt.
Renowned fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes translated von Olfers's short text about the changing seasons into English rhyming verse for the first time. Here are the Root Children getting ready for spring:
"All are quick and ever ready
To sew spring clothes. Their hands are steady.
With needles, scissors, spools of thread,
They measure and cut, full steam ahead.
And when the children's clothes are done,
Kind Mother Earth admires each one."
I like the way these lines now recall Smith's work "with needles, scissors, spools of thread" as well as the Root Children's.
[This is the English edition with the original art by von Olfers (Floris Books, 1980) that inspired Smith; plus an article about copyright responsibility re: Mother Earth and her Children. In case you're inspired to recreate your favorite picture book in some other medium.]
Reader Comments (10)
Wow! Thanks for the details about this title. It looks wonderful!
Very cool!
Thanks for visiting, Kelly and Karen! The stories behind the books (both the original edition and this one) are just as compelling as the one in them, I think. Smith (the quilter) made the quilt in memory of her son, Steven. A labor of love.
they look beautiful!
I'm going to request this from the library for my daughter. She's heard about the Root Children from school, but I don't think I've actually shown her the original book.
My own daughter was fascinated by the illustrations (in the new edition; our library doesn't hold the original). There is an image of the entire quilt at the back of the book, and she liked looking for the details in it.
I would love to see the original, though, as well as von Olfers's other books (esp. The Princess in the Forest).
yes, Kyra, they are!
We just got this book (in the same shipment as "The End"!) and we both love it. The quilt is amazing, and the story of the root children is one that Max is familiar with from preschool. We read it for story time during one snow day when I had a bunch of kids over at our house. Everyone liked looking for the details in the quilt, linking the story and the pictures.
What a neat find. I'm going to see if my library system has this one. Thank you!
I hope you find it, Susan! It really does reward the looking.
And Amanda, what a coincidence! Did you get anything else in that shipment I should post about?
Well...the other children's book I got in that shipment is "Buying Mittens" by Nankichi Niimi, a Japanese folk tale, on recommendation of someone in blogland but unfortunately I can't remember who. Max loves this one too, really he's fascinated with it. I think it's because of the magic of a fox's paw turning into a human hand. At first read I was a little taken aback because the mama fox sends her child into the dangerous town all by himself (she's too scared to go because of a previous bad experience she had), but that didn't bother Max at all, perhaps it made it more exciting for him. Anyway, it works out well in the end, and both mama and child foxes learn something about humans.
The illustrations are very pretty, very Japanese.