SWEET CLARA AND THE FREEDOM QUILT

When Sweet Clara, not yet 12, is taken from her mother and sent from North Farm to Home Plantation as a field hand, she's put in the care of ``Aunt Rachel,'' not ``my for-real blood aunt, but she did her best.'' Fearing for Clara's health, Rachel teaches her to sew and is lucky enough to get her a place in the Big House, where Clara listens, learns, and saves scraps that she eventually pieces into a map-quilt showing the way to the Ohio and freedom. The troubles Clara escapes are so muted here that her accomplishment seems almost too easy; in a straightforward narrative flavored with dialect, she mentions that recaptured slaves might be beaten and describes her grief at leaving her mother, but Ransome's moving depiction of the hug when the two are reunited on the way north is a more poignant clue to the pain of their separation. What's emphasized are Clara's resolve and creativity and the accomplishment of winning her freedom; in the same vein, Ransome depicts the characters as sturdy, purposeful, and mutually supportive and sets them in colorful landscapes eloquently proclaiming the earth's beauty. A well-told, handsomely illustrated story that effectively dramatizes young Clara's perseverance and courage. (Young Reader/Picture book. 5- 10)