The Story Blanket (review)

The children of Babba Zarrah’s snowy mountain village love to snuggle up on Zarrah’s special knitted blanket while they listen to her stories. When she notices that one of the children has a hole in his shoe, she decides to knit him some warm socks, unraveling a bit of her story blanket to obtain the needed yarn. As new needs arise among the villagers, Babba Zarrah continues to secretly provide for them until the beautiful story blanket is gone. The villagers surprise the generous storyteller with a gift in return, a new story blanket made from unravelings of their own blankets. As the children return to enjoy the new story blanket, though, Babba Zarrah notices a hole in one child’s sweater, and she’s off again. Wolff and Savitz’s original folktale is as warm and lovely as Babba Zarrah’s blanket. Storytellers and readers aloud will appreciate the text’s graceful yet restrained language, and children will enjoy the plot’s cozy circularity; the plot would make it pair well with Taback’s Joseph Had a Little Overcoat (BCCB 3/00) or other retellings of the “Something from Nothing” tale. Odriozola’s elegant illustrations graciously complement the polished text. Her simplified and stylized people possess lily-white skin (except for their ruddy cheeks), widely spaced dot eyes, thick bodies, and tiny hands and feet. The delicate outlines and detailing are attractively balanced by the vivid hues colors of the story blanket and the clothing, the sturdy solidity of numerous trees, and plenty of crisp, snowy white space. Humorous illustrative touches (an adult’s scarf so long it covers a child’s eyes and wraps around a dog, a raven enjoying a windy ride in a pair of bloomers on a clothesline, the cat in a coat so snug one of his eyes bulges) add further child appeal. Get out the afghans, gather up the kids, and settle back with this thoughtful offering, or get out the knitting needles and start your own story blanket.