by Sita Brahmachari
illustrated by Jane Ray
 
“A Story of Love and the Threads That Bind.” We always look forward to a Sita/Jane collaboration. The chime of their text/art is so sweetly melodious, it’s as if these two artists are singing to each other. At the book’s launch, Sita described a true labour of love: “an epic patchwork quilt of storytelling to which Jane and I have brought deeply of ourselves.”
 
The Tale That Time Sews feels luxurious, from the tactile gold cover embossing through to the inside pages which are flush with quilt blocks, introducing the iconography picked up in later pages. The book opens with a bobbin of gold thread spooling across a quilt on which a girl lays, alongside a playful cat. The next double spread shows the girl with her mum and Nana who threads her needle, working on a block with “the heart, that Time sews”. And so this lyrical narrative continues, tracking the girl’s family, her heritage, her history, her place in the world. Stitch by stitch the golden thread weaves memories, journeys and connections, looping back in to the past, spiralling towards the future. 
 
A fable of intergenerational love, kinship and identity threaded through with hope and belonging. Sita’s poetic text flows and soars while Jane’s illustrations are full of their trademark depth- offering rich skin tones and a saturation of jewelled motifs. [Mixed race protagonist/family; wider multi-ethnic community; background disability images including children with shortened limbs and wheelchair users]. Age 4-8, Hardback 24pp
 
Themes: Refugees and Migration