This is the Rope

K-Gr 3—In this quiet tale of remembering, a humble, ordinary bit of rope found beneath a South Carolina pine tree becomes the link between North and South, past and present, for one African American family. The young narrator recalls how her grandmother first discovered the rope, which transforms from skipping rope to clothesline to pull-toy leash to skipping rope again, as it's passed down through generations. Channie Waites narrates Jacqueline Woodson's understated text, weaving the story of one family's move from the rural South to the bustling Northern city during the Great Migration. James Ransome's oil paintings provide a beautiful backdrop for this snippet of family history, and his inclusion of period details, such as vinyl records and celebrity posters, helps reinforce the passage of time. Missing from this production is the author's note from the picture book (Penguin, 2013), recounting the details of her own family's travels from South to North during the 1960s and 1970s.