A Chair for My Mother
by Vera B. Williams
They save every coin in a jar. For one perfect chair.
For you if
your child needs to see that saving together toward something good is one of the most powerful things a family can do
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After a fire destroys everything, Rosa and her mother and grandmother save every coin they earn — waitress tips, babysitting money, jar by jar — until they have enough to buy one big, beautiful, comfortable armchair for Mama to rest in after her long shifts. Williams renders the working-class neighborhood in bright gouache colors that make the poverty vivid and warm simultaneously. A picture book about collective saving, about the labor of care, about what a community does when one of its own loses everything — neighbors arrive with furniture, with food, with what they can spare. The most honest picture book about working-class life ever written for small children and the one that treats a waitress mother as the hero she is.
Where This Book Lives
Part of a Reading Journey
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
