Weaving the Rainbow

ELIB 530A - LibraryThing Part B – Picture Book 2
This beautifully illustrated book takes the reader on the journey a weaver takes from conception to completion of a woven artwork. The opening pages show the woman weaver admiring her white sheep in a pasture and daydreaming about the colorful yarn that she will make with their wool. The first half of the book shows the seasonal rhythms of lambing through the first sheering of their wool after their first year. The second half of the book shows the process of the weaver from newly sheered wool through finished product. I have an affinity for books that deal with this process because my mother taught me how to spin and use natural dyes when I was a child. I wove my first tapestry at the show more age of twelve. I have since passed those skills on to my own children. When I was very young she read “Pelle’s New Suit” to me which is similar to this book in that it begins with sheep’s’ wool but the end product is different. Once my children came along, a couple of new books about the same process with a different twist were published. This one is a beautiful recent addition to those. It suffices in showing a beautiful process. To anyone who knows about the process of weaving however, there are a few technical details that are very questionable in the illustrations. But to the average reader and child it is both informative and enjoyable and those things won’t get in the way of telling about an age old process that has inspired many people throughout time. show less

Our art teacher requested this book as an inspiration for a unit about weaving. It's a lovely book, illustrated in soft watercolors. It takes us through the process of tending the sheep, shearing their wool, spinning it into skeins, using natural dyes, and weaving the colored strings into a piece of art.

Lyon proposes the question, How do you make a rainbow? Through the power of visions, art, and beauty a weaver can take something plain and make it into something as beautiful as a rainbow that shines through the sunlight. Even the whitest animals like sheep can be brought to life, it just takes the push of the hearts desire to change the ordinary into something extraordinary.