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  • Published: 15 August 2017
  • ISBN: 9780425288948
  • Imprint: Nancy Paulsen Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 32
  • RRP: $17.99

This Is the Rope

A Story from the Great Migration




A simple rope binds generations together in New York Times bestselling and National Book Award winning author Jacqueline Woodson's narrative. While award-winning illustrator, James Ransome beautifully portrays the family's experience of the Great Migration.

Jacqueline Woodson--New York Times Bestselling, National Book Award and Newbery Honor winning author--writes a rich story of a family adapting to change as they hold on to the past and embrace the future. With Coretta Scott King Award–winning illustrator James Ransome.

During the time of the Great Migration, millions of African American families relocated from the South, seeking better opportunities. The story of one family’s journey north during the Great Migration starts with a little girl in South Carolina who finds a rope under a tree one summer. She has no idea the rope will become part of her family’s history. But for three generations, that rope is passed down, used for everything from jump rope games to tying suitcases onto a car for the big move north to New York City, and even for a family reunion where that first little girl is now a grandmother.

  • Published: 15 August 2017
  • ISBN: 9780425288948
  • Imprint: Nancy Paulsen Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 32
  • RRP: $17.99

About the author

Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson is the is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature and received the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the 2018 Children's Literature Legacy Award. She is the 2014 National Book Award winner for her New York Times bestselling memoir Brown Girl Dreaming, which was also a recipient of the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, the NAACP Image Award and a Sibert Honor. She receive the Jane Addams Children's Book Award and is a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a three-time National Book Award finalist, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her books include The Other Side, Each Kindness, Coming On Home Soon, Feathers, Show Way, After Tupac and D Foster, and Miracle's Boys. She received the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement for her contributions to young adult literature.

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Praise for This Is the Rope

Woodson’s (Each Kindness) gentle, unpretentious writing and Ransome’s eloquent artwork breathe life into this story of a close-knit African-American family and their pursuit of a better life . . . The chronicle of a homely object in an age of disposables and the sense of place Woodson and Ransome evoke make this an especially strong and vibrant fictive memoir

Publishers Weekly, starred review