Show Way by Jacqueline Woodson

Jacqueline Woodson's 2007 Newbery Honor Book, Show Way, tells the story of eight generations of women in the author's family who "loved their baby girls up" and taught them to stitch quilts, called "show ways" picturing the route to liberty on their own personal underground railroad.

Beginning with "Soonie's great-grandma," who was sold away from her parents at the age of seven with nothing but some muslin, two needles, and red thread to remember her family by, the book traces the stories of each of the women who created their own way to freedom and passed on the gift of their courage and their art to Jacqueline Woodson and her own daughter today.

Woodson ends with

And I grew up, tall and straight-boned, writing every day.
And the words became books that told the stories of many people's Show Ways.

The "show-way" quilts become a metaphor for art itself and for the way each generation creates its own map to the future for those yet to come. Woodson continues the matrilineal tradition, not with needlework, but with her strong and sensitive novels that show her characters finding their way to work and love and joy in this world.