Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters: An African Cinderella Tale

When we left off the last time I'd mentioned that after such a great impromptu doll-making lesson (and manual writing workshop) the first hour of hanging out, Rebecca and I still had an entire hour left to fill.  So we did our regular routine:

We had a little chat, and she told me she'd found some treasures on the playground at her school:

I gasped when I saw them.  "What?" she asked excitedly.  "Oh, nothing," I casually replied, "they're just perfect for what we're going to read today--I mean they'll be perfect to use as a craft after we read our new book."  "Is it the African  Cinderella you were telling me about?"  I nodded.  She couldn't wait.  We knocked out her spelling test.

She read me what she'd written in her communication journal:

We corrected the spelling errors together.

And I wrote her back:

Next I pulled out the book:

I own hundreds and hundreds of children's books, and this is one of my very favorites.  The illustrations and the story are both captivating, and it received the Caldecott Honor Award for its wondrous pictures.

Here are some of my favorite pages:

We read the story, and Rebecca sighed after the last page.  "This is my new favorite," she said.  "I told you it was great!" I bragged, "Now let's do the craft!"

We looked back at the illustrations and noted the incredible jewelry that was worn by all of the characters on almost every page:

We spotted necklackes, bangles, arm cuffs...

headpieces and headbands

earrings and more...

Rebecca was on it.  "I know!" she exclaimed.  She helped herself to some kitchen string from my craft basket, taped the largest stone she found on the playground to it:

and made a necklace with a pendant

Then she made a ring out of paper:

And using Nyasha's headband as inspiration:

I made one for her.

Priceless treasures to keep in the Persian jewelry box we made a few weeks back.