Book: Carnavalia!: African-brazilian Folklore And Crafts

Carnavalia!: African-brazilian Folklore And Crafts

From School Library Journal
Grade 2-4-This book offers three things in one: a fictionalized account of the Brazilian carnival that takes place between Christmas and Lent, illustrations of the event, and its crafts. An afterword explains the festival in the context of Brazil's history and culture. The main part of the book explores the relationship between seven-year-old Mourrice and his nanny. She explains the significance of the carnival and the boy observes its songs, dances, and costumes. Papi's vivid, colorful illustrations, along with the overall book design, are strong points in an otherwise mediocre offering. The art reflects a number of influences, from traditional Afro-Brazilian folk art to post-modernists such as Jackson Pollack. The results are fresh and interesting. The crafts have potential, though some are too complex for young children. The text has numerous problems, including wooden characters and stilted, unrealistic dialogue. Nana in particular sounds like a combination of a tour guide and a folklore professor, and Mourrice's voice is adult in tone. However, readers will appreciate the illustrations, possibly to the extent of forgiving the poorly written text.

Lyn Miller-Lachmann, Siena College Library, Loudonville, NY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Book: The Art of Dimensional Embroidery

The Art of Dimensional Embroidery

Linda (Vancouver, WA) -

"I am a student of this beautiful art and have purchased different books on the subject. This one is my favorite as it explains the different basic stitches and pictures the instructions with such simplicity. Brazilian Embroidery looks difficult, but with this book she manages to instruct with such ease, that anyone can understand it. Great book for the beginner and yet one you will never want to do without! She takes you through the different threads used, the tools needed, and even how to launder your finished masterpiece. Very thorough instruction of stitches and how to use them to make floral designs."

The Inca: Activities and Crafts from a Mysterious Land

The Inca: Activities and Crafts from a Mysterious Land (Secrets of Ancient Cultures)

Product Description
Discover the ancient Inca culture with these fun games and activities!

Make an Inca tunic. Prepare a quinoa snack. Create a royal headdress. You’ll have a great time exploring the cultural traditions of these fascinating people as you learn to write an Inca poem, sculpt your own clay portrait in the shape of an Inca jug, and test your bluffing skills as you play Perudo.

This book is filled with activities and projects that will show you how the ancient Inca people lived and played, as well as how they managed to create an empire that extended nearly 3,000 miles! You’ll learn about the bravery of Inca warriors as you construct a war shield. You’ll discover how the Inca created beautiful music with panpipes and dance bells–and you’ll make them yourself! You’ll get to prepare a tasty Inca dish called Andean stew. Plus, you’ll find lots of amazing Inca facts on topics ranging from history and religion to language, metalworking, and art. So get ready for lots of fun as you discover the ancient secrets of The Inca.

Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands

Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands

Product Description
The Andean Mountains are home to a rich heritage of textile design and weaving. In particular, cloth has traditionally been the most significant art form and cultural vehicle of the Aymara and Quechua peoples. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, this book features eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century indigenous textiles woven by the Aymara and Quechua. The elaborately patterned pieces are all drawn from the previously unpublished Jeffrey Appleby Collection and include everyday and ceremonial textiles of all types: ponchos, skirts, belts, hats, and slings. The accompanying essays by Lynn Ann Meisch, Amy Oakland Rodman, Ed Franquemont, and Margot Blum Schevill address such topics as the long history of fibers, dyes, imagery, and textile use in the region; and the effects of urbanization and westernization on traditional Andean weaving.

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals

Product Description
The Quechua people of southern Peru are both agriculturalists and herders who maintain large herds of alpacas and llamas. But they are also weavers, and it is through weaving that their cultural traditions are passed down over the generations. Owing to the region’s isolation, the textile symbols, forms of clothing, and technical processes remain strongly linked to the people’s environment and their ancestors.

Heckman’s photographs convey the warmth and vitality of the Quechua people and illustrate how the land is intricately woven into their lives and their beliefs.

Quechua weavers in the mountainous regions near Cuzco, Peru, produce certain textile forms and designs not found elsewhere in the Andes. Their textiles are a legacy of their Andean ancestors. Andrea Heckman has devoted more than twenty years to documenting and analyzing the ways Andean beliefs persist over time in visual symbols embedded in textiles and portrayed in rituals. Her primary focus is the area around the sacred peak of Ausangate, in southern Peru, some eighty-five miles southeast of the former Inca capital of Cuzco.

The core of this book is an ethnographic account of the textiles and their place in daily life that considers how the form and content of Quechua patterns and designs pass stories down and preserve traditions as well as how the ritual use of textiles sustain a sense of community and a connection to the past. Heckman concludes by assessing the influences of the global economy on indigenous Quechua, who maintain their own worldview within the larger fabric of twentieth-century cultural values and hence have survived everything from Latin American militarism to a tidal wave of post-modern change.