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I found a nice time to explore @Triaglog & #39;s ode to our relationship with home & migration. It’s a picture book whose words weave as much magic as the pictures. Join me & this family as we travel from rural Wales to America #TNNO2021 #lovereading @Books_Wales @LlyfrauCymru (1/10)
The cover introduces us to a family looking up perhaps waiting to board the ship (or the title). Look closely & you’ll see a mixture of feelings. Also, note the bundle that the child’s both parents hold together. Are its colours mirrored elsewhere on the cover? (2/10)
A double-page spread greets us as the narrative journey begins. A stream guides our eye down to the shore. Birds fly from left to right & wind-shaped hawthorns lean. A family lives ‘amongst’ the elements. Quilt colours remain. The last, written resonates & will echo later (3/10)
From wind-swept rich colours to a tonal subduing of the landscape, winter arrives & the family tire. A pair of swallows leave for warmer climes. Here, we’re asked to look down on the home, powerless & hidden in the snow. There’s little pause between grey sea & sky here (4/10)
The palette darkens &, as rain drives us onwards, the land’s barrenness reveals itself. ‘Rough’,’shrunk’,’hungry’,’rarely’ mirror the hardships of living off & on the land. A shrinking, dreamy frame distances us from the family. Is there something better over the horizon? (5/10)
Finally, we are invited into this tiny cottage. Damp clothes hang draped over the peat-fire. As the child plays with her peg figures, her parents craft. Mam is singing as she sowing, threading into the quilt a story of her family and home. (6/10)
The quilt balloons, globe-like & pregnant with ripples of red thread. It carries dreams & song & hopes. As it grows, so the furniture in the cottage disappears (the child is sheltered from the why). As the family begin a new chapter, 3 swallows return where there’d been 2 (7/10)
Several pages on, we find the family at sea. On the recto there tiny ship cuts through a deep ocean & again we look down upon them. The journey may seem endless (emphasised by lack of horizon & double-page bleed) but I feel hopeful; we’re closer to reaching that next page (8/10)
On the voyage, the child is sick with hiraeth (a longing for home). Mam wraps her in the quilt. Each piece, each thread carries in it the curve of a valley, a twist of a stream, the ripple of water over stone. Its warmth soothes her & she realises that home is quilt-woven (9/10)
Several pages on, the family has settled in a new land. Lines echo from that first spread. Rolling hills replace the rolling waves of the sea. The land is rich here yet the quilt hanging beneath the sun& #39;s warmth reminds us that we inhabit hiraeth as it inhabits us. (10/10)
