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Two families—both filled with love, both encountering hardship and joy, both living in the same place—and the one simple table that connects them all.
For years, a mining family’s life revolves around their table. It’s where they eat, read, sew, laugh, and pay the bills; it’s stained with easter egg paint, warmed by fresh biscuits and the soft morning sun.
Outside the house, though, Appalachia changes. The coal mine closes, and the bills keep coming. Eventually, there’s no choice but to move on— and to say goodbye to the table.
But then: When a young girl’s father sees the table by the road, he slams on the brakes. A lifelong carpenter, he can see it’s something special. They bring it home and clean it up; sitting around it, they eat and work and laugh. The girl wonders if another child once sat there, if they were anything like her. She’ll never know . . . but the table remembers.
Expressively illustrated by Caldecott Honoree Jason Griffin, the story is deeply personal to coauthors Wiley Blevins, raised in West Virginia, and Winsome Bingham, who immigrated as a child from Jamaica to the U.S. South.
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection
About the author
Winsome Bingham and Wiley Blevins; Illustrated by Jason Griffin
